Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, only the second Kentuckian in history to serve as his party’s leader in the U.S. Senate, released a memo today from pollster Jan van Lohuizen to the McConnell campaign showing a double digit lead for the Senate leader over potential rivals. 

McConnell campaign representative Justin Brasell noted, “Senator McConnell’s current job approval of 61% shows that what we’ve said before is true -- there will be no question for the majority of voters that Senator McConnell deserves reelection this fall.”

A survey of 600 likely voters conducted January 6th through January 8th by Voter / Consumer Research shows Senator McConnell in a very strong position for reelection.  The margin of error is +/- 4%.  According to the survey’s findings:

-McConnell’s job approval numbers are excellent with 61% approving of the job he is doing and only 29% disapproving.

-Greg Stumbo would have been the most promising Democrat challenger.  He was right to get out of the race, because McConnell has expanded his lead in a hypothetical contest with Stumbo to ten percentage points.

-McConnell leads other potential rivals by double digits in head to head comparisons:  52% to 37% over Bruce Lunsford, a 15% margin; 53% to 35% over Charlie Owen, an 18% margin; 54% to 32% over Greg Fischer, a 22% margin; and 55% to 32% over Andrew Horne, a 23% margin.

As pollster Jan van Lohuizen points out in his memo, the Lunsford numbers are particularly instructive in that they show what kind of name ID can be purchased with excessive spending from a personal fortune.  The poll shows that in spite of having spent more than $14.7 million in the past four years campaigning for statewide office, with more than $6.6 million of that being spent in just the past year, 64% still either do not know of Lunsford or have no opinion of him.

You can read the polling memo from pollster Jan van Lohuizen here.

The full survey questions and results can be found here.