Two More Polls Show KY-Sen Within the Margin of Error

The first poll comes from SurveyUSA, which last showed Republican Rand Paul beating Democrat Jack Conway by 15 points.

Democrat Jack Conway has cut sharply into Republican Rand Paul's once-commanding lead in Kentucky's U.S. Senate race, moving into a statistical tie with a little more than five weeks before Election Day, according to the latest Courier-Journal/WHAS11 Bluegrass Poll.

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According to the poll, Paul leads Conway 49 percent to 47 percent, with 4 percent undecided. That lead is well within the poll's 4 percentage point margin of error.

The second survey comes from Democratic pollster the Benenson Strategy Group (.pdf).

Rand Paul (R): 45 percent
Jack Conway (D): 42 percent


This is the second time in as many weeks where the results are within the margin of error, and comes as Conway is withstanding a barrage of misleading, negative attacks by special interests from outside Kentucky. This shows that Conway is well-positioned to win the Senate seat.

Conway is indeed "well-positioned to win" -- which is no small feat considering the GOP-tilt of Kentucky and the sentiments running against the Democrats as the party in power nationally -- but he still has a long way to get to the 50 percent marker. Six years ago, Democrat Dan Mongiardo got close, too, pulling in more than 49 percent of the vote in his bid against Republican Senator Jim Bunning, whose retirement opened up this seat. But while Mongiardo got close to victory, close wasn't good enough -- just as it won't be for Conway. Nonetheless, this isn't a bad position to be in for Conway or the Democrats five weeks out.