Poll: Rand Paul Has An Eight Point Lead In Kentucky

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Written By:
Rob Port

Aug 1, 2010
3:57pm

There is a serious battle going on within the Republican party between grassroots conservative activists and party insiders. The insiders are dead-set against so-called “tea party” candidates like Sharon Angle and Rand Paul because they’re not polished enough or not moderate enough and, we’re told, give Democrats a chance to win. But those concerns are proving unfounded.

In Nevada, despite concerns about a amateurish campaign, Angle is within one point of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and in Kentucky Rand Paul has a big lead over his Democrat challenger.

In an election for United States Senator from Kentucky today, 07/30/10, Republican Rand Paul edges Democrat Jack Conway, 51% to 43%, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted exclusively for the Louisville Courier-Journal and WHAS-TV.

Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll 2 months ago, the contest is essentially unchanged, with Paul flat and Conway down a nominal 2 points. Paul today runs a little stronger among men, a little weaker among women, than he did in SurveyUSA’s last poll. Conway may have made up some ground in Western Kentucky, but lost some ground in Eastern Kentucky. 1 in 4 Democrats cross-over to vote Republican. Independents break 3:2 Republican.

Just to go a little deeper, Paul leads Conway in every single age demographic and even has the support of 25% of Democrats.

So much for conservative candidates being unable to appeal to a broad electoral base.

It seems to me that much of the hand-wringing from Washington is coming from the camps of establishment Republicans. Like Mitch McConnell, for instance, who is currently the Republican leader in the Senate (and also from Kentucky, as it happens). McConnell backed Paul’s primary rival, and hasn’t exactly embraced Paul’s primary win with open arms. McConnell’s problem with Paul isn’t that Paul can’t win the election. It’s that Rand Paul is too conservative.

Which is like a microcosm for the right in the Republican party. The party elites are afraid of the base. They pander to the base, but they don’t want the conservative base of the Republican party to actually have a say in how things go. Which is why Senator Jim DeMint is an outsider in his own party, and why candidates like Paul and Angle are given the cold shoulder.