By Katherine Rizzo, CQ Staff

From Political Perceptions, wsj.com

Sen. Mitch McConnell has either hit a speed bump or hit the wall.

In the middle of September, Sen. McConnell seemed to be sitting pretty.

As the Senate’s Republican leader, Sen. McConnell had succeeded in thwarting majority Democrats on bill after bill – a proficient player of the inside game who made sure the minority wasn’t muscled aside on major legislation.

His party has long been on a path to lose seats in November, but expected to maintain what they call their “firewall” – enough Republican seats that if the party line held, Democrats couldn’t get the 60 votes needed to move even halfway-controversial legislation.

Unlike the House, where Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio has been besieged and second-guessed by fellow Republicans, there’s been no grumbling against Sen. McConnell in the Senate’s Republican ranks. As long as he won his own re-election contest in November, there appeared to be no doubt that Sen. McConnell’s caucus would re-elect him as their leader. And given his extreme financial edge – a cash-on-hand advantage of $9.1 million versus Democrat Bruce Lunsford’s $1.3 million – plus the advantages of being the incumbent, Sen. McConnell hasn’t been viewed as a teetering candidate. A lot more attention has gone to the seats considered closer calls – Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, New Hampshire, Colorado, Minnesota, Louisiana, Maine and Alaska.

Despite some up-and-down polling waves earlier in the campaign season, a flip of the Kentucky seat seemed unlikely as recently as three weeks ago.

Big Lead in Early Polls

Public polls in July and August showed Sen. McConnell with a double-digit lead. In early September, Sen. McConnell’s campaign released polling figures that had him up 52 percent to 35 percent, and a poll for the lefty Web site DailyKos.com showed McConnell with an almost-as-comfortable lead of 50 percent to 37 percent.

But look now.

A poll for local television stations showed McConnell had slipped below the 50 percent mark and the gap with Mr. Lunsford was within the margin of error – a statistical dead heat.

Polling conducted a few days later for the Louisville Courier-Journal showed the same tight result, though support for Mr. Lunsford looked soft. More of the survey respondents who favored the Democrat said they might change their minds before voting, and only 43 percent of those who said they preferred Mr. Lunsford called their support “strong.” That compares with 60 percent of Mr. McConnell’s voters who said they were strong for their current senator.

Both polls were taken before President George W. Bush ’s speech to the nation about the economic bailout package but after the meltdown on Wall Street and threats to the availability of credit across the country started dominating the news.