New Kentucky Senate Polls Put Rand Paul Up – A Lot

Two new polls are out today, and both are really good news for the Rand Paul for Senate campaign:

First is my favorite: PPP has Paul up by 13 over jerk-face liberal Jack Conway, 53 – 40. As Jim Gergahty says, Aqua Buddha is bad karma.

Independents have moved toward Rand Paul in droves over the last month and a half and as a result he’s built his lead in the Kentucky Senate race up to 13 points at 53-40. [...]

There’s been no change in Rand Paul’s favorability numbers in the wake of the controversial ‘Aqua Buddha’ ad. He’s at a net +6 (49/43), virtually identical to his +5 (45/40) a month ago. Jack Conway has seen his numbers plunge though. Where before voters split evenly in their assessments of him, giving him a favorability of 36/36, they now view him mostly in a negative light at -13 (39/52).

There’s little doubt the ad has backfired. 56% of voters say they think it was inappropriate to only 15% who think it was alright. Even Democrats feel by a 41/24 spread that it crossed the line and perhaps relating back to Conway’s huge new deficit with independents they think it was wrong by a 68/7 spread.

Next comes the almost as impressive Fox News / Rasmussen poll that has Paul up by 7, 50 – 43.

A new Fox News battleground state poll of likely voters shows Paul with a 7-point lead, 50 percent to 43 percent, but also shows voters personally displeased with Conway.

While Paul was viewed favorably by 48 percent of voters and unfavorably by 41 percent of voters, only 38 percent had a positive impression of Conway while 51 percent held an unfavorable view.

Only 30 percent of respondents said that Conway shared their values compared to 43 percent for Paul.

But Conway’s biggest problem in his race against the libertarian Republican Paul has been the dire unpopularity of President Obama and his agenda in Kentucky.

Just 35 percent of respondents approved of the job Obama was doing, 66 percent favored repealing all or part of the president’s national health-insurance law and 51 percent thought Obama’s policies had hurt the state’s economy, compared to 21 percent who thought they had helped.

It’s looking good for Paul, but I’m not getting cocky.