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Race Ratings Change: Kentucky Senate

The Kentucky Senate race is over, Rothenberg writes. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
The Kentucky Senate race is over, Rothenberg writes. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

One of the most watched Senate races of 2014 is over. Take it off your list of states that could fall either way on Tuesday.  

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has opened up a comfortable lead over his Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state, ensuring McConnell will win a sixth term Tuesday. The only question now is whether McConnell will get a larger margin than he had six years ago, when he defeated Democrat Bruce Lunsford by six points.  

Political observers have long portrayed the McConnell-Grimes race as a tossup, but we have long believed that the race would eventually reflect the state’s fundamentals, which strongly favor the GOP nominee. In fact, we have never had the race more competitive than leaning toward McConnell.  

Grimes’s prospects are now so poor that we are moving the Rothenberg Political Repor t/Roll Call rating of the race from Leans Republican to Republican Favored .  

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