Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) himself might not be able to count on re-election this November. Although there’s still a Kentucky Democratic primary election to decide who will face McConnell in November, when he’s pitted against prominent Democratic candidate Amy McGrath in a newly released poll, he’s losing. In the recently released poll conducted by RMG Group and reported by a group called U.S. Term Limits, McGrath got 41 percent and McConnell got 40 percent of the support. Those numbers suggest that Kentucky is more in play than Republicans might expect.
There is one noteworthy caveat in the new Kentucky polling — after respondents were informed of McGrath’s support for term limits for members of Congress, her support jumped significantly.
‘The poll, which was conducted from May 21-24, found that McGrath currently leads McConnell 41% to 40%, which is well within the margin of error. But after voters are told that it is McGrath, not McConnell, who agrees with President Trump on term limiting Congress, she jumps out to a 15-point lead. When voters are informed that McGrath supports term limits and McConnell opposes it, McGrath’s support among Republicans nearly doubles from 8% to 17%. Among independents, her share rises from 33% to 43%.’
Those are formidable numbers! A 15 percent lead over McConnell (after voters were informed of her support for term limits) is no small feat. Polling of a McConnell/McGrath match-up has been sparse, but in February, a Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group poll found McConnell with an only 3 percent lead when pitted against McGrath — although a more recent Civiqs poll found McConnell with a 20 percent lead over McGrath, so there’s been a lot of variance.
The Kentucky primaries, in which the general election challenger for McConnell will be formally decided, are slated for June 23. A Kentucky state legislator named Charles Booker has been challenging McGrath for the state’s Democratic Senate nomination.
Meanwhile, Republicans elsewhere are struggling, some much more decisively than McConnell. In Arizona, for instance, Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly leads incumbent Republican Senator Martha McSally by an average of a staggering 9.8 percent in polls. There’s not a lot of ambiguity there — the race leans towards the Democrats, big time.
Other vulnerable Republican Senate incumbents are in Colorado, North Carolina, Maine, and Montana — races in each one of those states are currently rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report, which also states that two Senate races in Georgia along with races in Iowa and Kansas merely “lean” Republican, which is the last category before toss-up status.
Trump’s strategy for dealing with sinking Republican political chances has been to deny reality. After Fox revealed a national poll with Biden leading him big time, he tweeted:
‘@FoxNews is out with another of their phony polls, done by the same group of haters that got it even more wrong in 2016. Watch what happens in November. Fox is terrible!’
The polls are not “phony” — Trump, and Republicans around the country, for that matter, are losing. Voters are sick and tired of putting up with their nonsense, apparently.
.@FoxNews is out with another of their phony polls, done by the same group of haters that got it even more wrong in 2016. Watch what happens in November. Fox is terrible!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020
