Poll: McConnell enjoys comfortable lead over McGrath in Kentucky U.S. Senate race
A public poll on Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race released Tuesday showed former Marine Corps pilot Amy McGrath significantly trailing U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell three months before Election Day.
The poll, conducted online by Morning Consult, found McConnell ahead by 17 percentage points (53%-36%) — a margin larger than his victory over former Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes in 2014 — even as McGrath has raised a record amount to challenge McConnell.
In an emailed statement, McGrath said she knew it wouldn’t be easy to beat McConnell.
“The numbers that matter most to me right now are not political polls,” McGrath wrote. “They are the 15,000 new COVID cases over the last month and the more than 230,000 Kentuckians without health care. They are the more than 1 million Kentucky workers who have filed for unemployment and the more than 750,000 Kentuckians who live in poverty.”
In fundraising emails, the campaign has repeatedly said the race was “within reach.” On July 16, the campaign sent out a press release that said McGrath was 7 percentage points down. That poll included a libertarian candidate.
Kate Cooksey, a spokeswoman for the McConnell campaign, said they had “nothing to add.”
The poll, which surveyed 793 likely voters online and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, also found that only 79 percent of Democrats said they supported McGrath while 84 percent of Republicans said they supported McConnell.
Kentucky has a large number of voters who are still registered as Democrats but tend to vote Republican (12 percent of Democrats said they would support McConnell) but McGrath’s lagging support among Democrats could indicate lingering resentment after a competitive primary race.
McGrath traveled across the state Saturday to register voters, especially former felons who have regained the right to vote, racial minorities and young people. Although former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Broihier appeared with McGrath as a sign of unity at an event in downtown Lexington, state Rep. Charles Booker did not attend her event in the West End of Louisville.
Booker, who lost the primary by less than 3 percentage points, has said he won’t support McGrath unless she listens to issues that are most important to his supporters. Booker was invited to attend Saturday but turned the McGrath campaign down, according to spokesman Terry Sebastian.
Broihier, who campaigned hard against McGrath but only won 5 percent of the vote in the primary, said Saturday he offered to help McGrath and the voter registration drive was the first event they asked him to attend.
“This is about beating Mitch McConnell and so that’s why I’m here and as long as they continue to call and it’s within my power to do so, I’m going to do everything I can to beat Mitch McConnell,” Broihier said.
Although McConnell had a comfortable lead over McGrath in the poll, it paled in comparison to President Donald Trump’s lead over former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump, who won Kentucky by 30 percentage points in 2016, led Biden by 24 percentage points (59%-35%). His support has dipped only slightly despite a turbulent four years in the White House.
Trump’s lead in Kentucky was larger than in Alabama, South Carolina and Texas, according to the poll. The poll had Biden with a 1 percentage point lead in Texas and only a 5 percentage point lead in South Carolina.
Amid the turmoil, McConnell has been a fierce defender of Trump, both in guiding the Supreme Court confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and during Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate.
McConnell also led McGrath among independents by 12 percentage points (45%-33%).
This story was originally published August 4, 2020 at 10:21 AM.
