Thoughts On The Kentucky Senate Race

These charts are from information contained in a new poll on the Kentucky Senate race. It is the SurveyUSA Poll -- done between August 25th and 27th of 569 likely Kentucky voters, with a 4.2 point margin of error. The top chart shows the results for all adults, and the bottom one gives the demographic breakdown.

The Louisville Courier-Journal requested the poll, and they printed it under the headline "McConnell expands lead in Bluegrass Poll". I'm not at all sure that headline is justified. Note that McConnell's lead is within the poll's margin of error -- which means he may not have a lead at all (at least not one that can be determined in a statistically significant way).

I was a bit disappointed in the demographic breakdown regarding the women's vote. It shows Grimes with only a 1 point lead among women. She is going to have to do much better than that to beat McConnell. If that poll number is correct, Grimes will need to get most of the 7% undecided among women, and then have women vote in larger numbers than men -- and both of those things could easily happen.

But there was something else in that SurveyUSA Poll -- something that could have a real effect on the outcome of the election. The poll asked Kentuckians whether they wanted to see the minimum wage raised from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Note that every demographic group (except those making more than $80,000 a year) showed majority support for raising the minimum wage.

This is an issue that Mitch McConnell is on the wrong side of -- and he has not only helped to kill the raise in the Senate, but has been clear he would do the same in the future. Alison Grimes, the Democratic candidate, needs to jump on this issue and beat it like a drum until election day. She needs to make it clear to all voters that she would support raising the minimum wage, while McConnell (who has sold out to the corporations) opposes that. This could be the issue that costs McConnell enough votes to keep him from winning re-election.