June 28 roundup: Polls, predictions and analyses

Rounding up a few tidbits as we wait for the latest Bluegrass Poll, due at 6 p.m.:

• Alison Lundergan Grimes's campaign says former President Bill Clinton will join her Aug. 6 at events in Lexington (11 a.m.) and Hazard (3 p.m.). Clinton previously appeared at a Louisville fund-raiser for Grimes. 
• A random survey was conducted of 1,054 registered voters in the Kentucky Senate race by the conservative magazine Human Events and Gravis Marketing. "The poll results revealed the race to be even at 45 percent," Gravis reports. Gravis head Doug Kaplan said Sen. Mitch “McConnell and Grimes have been neck and neck for months, but will the people of Kentucky vote McConnell out when they approve of President Obama by only 32 percent?”
• Anthony Salvanto, elections director for CBS News, said on "Face the Nation" Sunday that 80 percent of people who disapprove of a president's job performance vote against his party. An online poll by CBS and The New York Times' Upshot blog, following 100,000 people in states with competitive Senate races, has McConnell with 50 percent and Grimes with 46 percent in Kentucky. "I think Kentucky is a pretty tough task for the Democrats," Upshot Editor David Leonhardt said on the show, adding that it would be "exceedingly unusual" for a state like Kentucky to flip to the president's party in such an election. Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report said "The environment is very good for Republicans," with a low job rating for Obama and unhappiness with the direction of the country, but "What's standing in the way in many cases is the Republicans themselves," because they have lower approval ratings than in 2010.
• However, when it comes to Kentucky, "There’s times when I feel like it’s immune from the national environment,” Chuck Todd, chief White House correspondent for NBC News, said at the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce annual meeting last Monday. “I think that Grimes has the harder road to go because of coal. If you look at the national environment, I’d rather be Grimes than McConnell. I think that the anti-Washington vibe is that real.” McConnell is symbolic of Washington and has a low job rating, Todd noted. For a report from Rachel Aretakis of Louisville Business First, click here.