McConnell ad questions Grimes's attendance record; Democratic Senate committee starts ads

As a new month begins, so does a new advertiser . . .

• Today Sen. Mitch McConnell started a television commercial saying that his opponent isn't showing up for work, backed up with a press release with a link to a Washington Free Beacon video of an encounter between her and Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Sam Youngman's questions yesterday about the topic.
• "Democrats aren't giving up yet," The Washington Post reports in its "Read In" morning roundup. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will "start its first independent expenditure advertisements on behalf of Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes on Tuesday. They're spending $295,000 this week and about $300,000 next week on Lexington and Louisville broadcast. Combined with Grimes' own spending, Democrats will be outspending Republicans about two to one this week." The first ad attacks McConnell as a creature of Washington who has voted six times to raise his own pay.
• An article by Chris Cillizza, Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan of the Post lists the 13 Senate races they consider the most likely to switch parties. The McConnell-Grimes race dropped to No. 13, from No. 11 on the previous list, making it the least likely competitive race to switch control. The writers say Grimes's chances of winning "seem to be fading" partly because "her gun ad backfired," and "was trumped by a commercial McConnell ran a day later," giving a tough reply and mocking her. –Anthony Pendleton
• Forbes magazine reports how Facebook analysts use data to predict a number of aspects of people's lives. One of the things they can predict is which candidate will win elections based on how many likes he or she has. According to a post on the Government and Politics on Facebook page, 82 percent of Senate candidates in the 2010 midterms who had more likes won their race. McConnell's Facebook page has almost twice as many likes as Grimes's page, nearly 152,000 likes to her almost 89,000. Such data do not reflect the engagement of people with such pages. –Anthony Pendleton