New Kentucky poll puts Barr up nine, well inside our forecast's range

A Global Strategy Group survey of 600 likely voters in Kentucky, fielded August 24-27, put Republican Andy Barr at 49 percent and Democrat Charles Booker at 40 percent. That is the only new poll in this race in our data.

Our forecast did not move. It gives Booker a 2 in 100 chance of winning the seat and Barr a 98 percent chance, with a mean margin of R+23.6. The run before this one, at 6:32 AM ET on September 9, had the same probabilities and the same mean margin; the only change was a fractional shift in the simulated range, now a 5th-to-95th percentile span of R+41.7 to R+5.5.

The nine-point gap in the Global Strategy Group poll sits at the narrow end of that span, but it is inside it, and one survey of 600 voters does not carry enough weight against the rest of what the model uses to shift a race we already score at 98 percent for the Republican. Kentucky's seat is open: Mitch McConnell, the Republican incumbent, is not among the candidates.

The race matters to the chamber arithmetic more than the margin suggests. Our model gives Democrats a 41 percent chance of winning Senate control and Republicans 58 percent, with a mean of 49.8 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats for control and Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to their side. On the current numbers, Kentucky is not one of the seats that decides that.

Our national generic-ballot average stands at D+6.1 across 24 polls over the past 45 days. Kentucky, as our model reads it, is not tracking with that.