• Posted on Wednesday, October 22, 2008
  • Bookmark and Share
  • email
  • |
  • print
  • |
  • rss

tool name

close
tool goes here

Senate Minority Leader McConnell holding a small lead

Sign up for email newsletters now!

Sign up for email newsletters now!

Never miss a McClatchy story
Comments (0)
|

Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell is clinging to a four-point lead over Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford, although less than half of Kentucky voters say they have a favorable opinion of McConnell, a Herald-Leader/WKYT Kentucky Poll shows.

McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, would receive 47 percent of the vote compared to 43 percent for Lunsford if the election were held today.

The telephone survey of 600 likely voters was conducted between Oct. 19 and 21 by Research 2000 of Olney, Md. It has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

While the race has clearly tightened over the last five months, McConnell's level of support has remained relatively unchanged. Forty-eight percent of likely voters said they had a favorable or very favorable view of him — the same percentage as a Herald-Leader/WKYT Kentucky Poll conducted in May.

In the new poll, 48 percent of people said they had a negative view of McConnell, which was slightly higher than the 45 percent of respondents who reported having an unfavorable view of Lunsford, a Louisville businessman.

That's a high number for a challenger and could be the biggest reason for Lunsford's inability to pull ahead of McConnell in any public polls so far, said Del Ali, president of Research 2000.

Read the full story at Kentucky.com.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

We welcome comments. Please keep them civil, short and to the point. Obscene, profane, abusive and off topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for taking part — and abiding by these simple rules.

Comments are displayed newest first. If you would like to read a thread from beginning to end, select "Oldest first" from the drop down menu.

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT BLOG

Planet Washington

"Planet Washington" is a group blog updated by journalists in McClatchy's Washington Bureau. Send a story suggestion.