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Monday, Jun. 02, 2008

Polls are at odds in race for Senate

Everything about Kentucky's U.S. Senate race so far suggests that observers should have a Ph.D in mathematics to make any sense of it.

Last week, two polls with seemingly conflicting results became public. One, from the Rasmussen Reports opinion polling firm, showed Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford ahead of Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell.

McConnell's internal campaign polling, meanwhile, showed the senator with a double-digit lead.

So how can one figure out which candidate starts with the inside track to victory?

Simple. More numbers.

Conventional wisdom and vote totals from recent elections suggest that a Democratic challenger's clearest path to victory would come from running up vote margins in Kentucky's biggest cities.

For instance, Daniel Mongiardo, the current lieutenant governor, nearly pulled off an upset over Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning in 2004 by racking up an 84,500-vote lead from the state's two biggest counties: Jefferson and Fayette. But Bunning dominated in Northern and Western Kentucky, enough to win the race by more than 22,000 votes.

A problem Lunsford faces is that McConnell traditionally has fared very well in the counties with the most votes during his four previous Senate elections.

He won his home county of Jefferson three times and won Lexington in all four races.

In fact, dating back to his narrow win over Democratic Sen. Walter "Dee" Huddleston in 1984, McConnell has a 93 percent success rate of winning in the top-10 most-populated counties. He has lost in Jefferson and Daviess counties to former Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane in 1990 and Hardin County to Huddleston in '84.

Not counting McConnell's landslide victory in 2002 over Democrat Lois Combs Weinberg, McConnell has amassed an average cushion of 47,167 votes out of the 20 most populous counties, according to a Herald-Leader analysis.

Together, those 20 out of 120 counties account for 55 percent of all Kentucky voters.

If McConnell could duplicate that average margin in the biggest counties this fall, that would force Lunsford to collectively win the smaller 80 counties by a margin of 7 to 10 percentage points, depending on turnout.

That would be a tall order considering that such GOP strongholds as Clay, Jackson, Clinton and Monroe counties would be in that set.

"We're running a statewide race and our goal is to win all over the state," said Justin Brasell, McConnell's campaign manager, who declined to give away any internal strategy other than to do well everywhere.

A prolific fund-raiser, McConnell has relied heavily on a statewide blanket of TV advertising. This year, he has run spots touting his position as Senate Republican leader since November.

So Lunsford's campaign plan is to rewrite McConnell's traditional electoral map and compete head-to-head on television in places such as Northern and Western Kentucky, said Lunsford campaign consultant Achim Bergmann.

"That's something we're going to be able to afford to do," he said. Lunsford is expected to receive national fund-raising help and pour some of his personal wealth into the race as well -- resources that McConnell's previous opponents, such as 1996 challenger and current governor Steve Beshear, lacked.

Bergmann also said Lunsford can appeal to Western and Eastern Kentuckians who have tended to vote Republican in recent elections.

"It's the conservative Democrats that we won in the primary and those are the ones who vote for McConnell in the general elections," Bergmann said. "We've been telling people that from the very beginning -- that Bruce's independent profile that he has and that kind of maverick nature that appeals to those voters."

A May 23 memo from McConnell's pollster, Jan R. van Lohuizen of Voter/Consumer Research, says some of the survey numbers from a May 21-22 poll of 600 likely voters might show that Lunsford's attempt to showcase that persona isn't working.

"Forty-five percent of the sample continues to say they don't know enough about him to rate him or they don't know who he is," von Lohuizen wrote. "The conservative conclusion would be to say that he has ground to gain on name (identification). But after three primary campaigns and a large investment in advertising, it may just be that he does not have very much to say about himself that is interesting to voters."

Overall, that poll showed McConnell leading Lunsford 50 percent to 39 percent with a margin of error of 4 points.

But the Rasmussen telephone poll of 500 likely voters showed Lunsford leading 49 percent to 44 percent. That survey had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

A Herald-Leader/WKYT poll last month showed McConnell with a 12-point edge over Lunsford.

But, as McConnell has said in previous races, the only numbers that count are on Election Day.