On the heels of a few public polls that have shown her trailing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes‘s Senate campaign is touting a new internal poll showing her with a one-point lead.
The new survey shows Grimes receiving a 43 percent share of the vote, with McConnell at 42 percent.
The poll, conducted for the campaign from Sept. 4 through Sept. 7, sampled a “likely electorate” of 800 people — a different measure than most polls, which screen for self-identified likely voters — with a margin of error of 3.5 percent.
Pollster Mark Mellman said his survey’s measure is more accurate than public polls, which have recently shown Grimes trailing McConnell by a few points, although usually within the margin of error.
“We’ve been right when these public polls have been wrong,” Mellman said, citing polling he conducted for Scott Stringer in the New York City comptroller’s race last year. “Am I confident we’ve got this right? The answer is yes.”
Mellman declined on a call with reporters to delve into the specific numbers turned up by the survey, but said Grimes is polling better among women than men. He also noted that respondents familiar with Grimes’s tenure as secretary of state rated her job performance more favorably than McConnell’s — but many more people were familiar with McConnell’s work in the Senate, where he is the highest-ranking Republican.
“He is better known, not surprisingly, but she has the stronger image with voters,” Mellman said. “This is a race that will go down to the wire.”
