PPP. 12/18-21. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (No trend lines)
Republican primary
Paul (R) 44
Grayson (R) 25
That's Rand Paul, Ron's son. And the Paulites are responding with vigor, flooding his campaign with cash. Running against an incumbent politician is good business these days, even when (like Paul) you announce your campaign in New York City and clearly state that you have little interest in representing Kentucky interests. For Bluegrass State Republicans, that's apparently not a problem.
Grayson is not exactly a moderate, but in Kentucky teabagging circles he's become one. He's a former Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, and is blamed by fans of ultra-conservative Jim Bunning for helping push the senile senator into earlier retirement.
A Research 2000 poll of Kentucky for Daily Kos back in early September (so a bit dated) had Democrats running stronger against Paul, and that's not likely to change. While Grayson has proven statewide viability with two elections as Kentucky Secretary of State under his belt, including a 2004 victory that broke a three-decade Democratic stranglehold on his state's top offices. The dude has obvious statewide appeal, compared to Rand -- the unaccomplished teabagging son of a fringe backbencher congressman from Texas.
Democrats have strong contenders for this seat as well -- Attorney General Jack Conway and Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo -- so this was already shaping up to be a battle of titans (Conway leads 37-33 in the Democratic primary, according to this PPP poll). It's likely the pollsters will release general election numbers soon enough, but we can probably bet that Grayson performs better in the general against those Democrats than the fringier Paul will. If teabaggers want to help by taking out their most electable general election guy, so much the better. We'll need all the assistance we can get in 2010.