Poll: McConnell Up 47% on Bevin

Poll: McConnell Up 47% on Bevin

According to a new poll conducted by Jan van Lohuizen from August 18 through August 20 of 600 likely Republican primary voters in Kentucky, Senator Mitch McConnell has a huge 47-point lead over his Republican primary opponent, Matt Bevin. McConnell garnered 68 percent of those surveyed while Bevin had only 21 percent. Only 8 percent were undecided.

McConnell strongly leads across the board, straight-ticket Republican voters (+61), very conservative voters (+57), seniors (+55), younger women (+53), men (+49), and those who consider themselves Tea Party Republicans (+46).

McConnell’s lead may swell even more. McConnell launched an ad that targets Bevin for having misleadingly claimed he graduated from MIT; the ad only started airing the last day the poll was taken. The history of the back and forth over the original Bevin claim goes like this:

The Hill reported last March that Bevin had claimed in the headline section of his LinkedIn page that he had attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Below that on the same page Bevin listed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the top of his educational profile, and following that he stated he was a 2008 graduate of the Entrepreneurial Master’s Program at the MIT Endicott campus, calling it a “renowned executive education program sponsored by the MIT Enterprise Inc. Magazine and the Entrepreneurs Organization.”

But as Kate Anderson, the director of marketing and enrollment at MIT’s Sloan Executive Education program said, the information Bevin gave was misleading. She said the program “is not an official program offered by MIT, MIT Sloan or MIT Sloan Executive Education.”

Anderson continued:

It is not a Masters program, certificate or any other kind of MIT program and does not bear any MIT credit whatsoever… I am afraid the title, the venue and the involvement of the ‘MIT Enterprise Forum’… are easily misconstrued as implying a connection with MIT which does not exist.

Wendy Enelow, executive director of the Resume Writing Academy and author of more than 20 résumé and career books, said:

That implies to me that he attended MIT and if that is not the case then he is misrepresented and included non-accurate information. It could have very easily been accurate had he included the full name of the seminar company. We are led to believe he attended the world-renowned MIT and that is not true.

Yet Bevin emailed The Hill, vouching for the the accuracy of his LinkedIn profile, saying, “The ‘bio’ that is listed on LinkedIn is the one that is correct as it is the only one that I personally created.” After The Hill contacted him about the issue, Bevin revised the profile.

The Hill also reported that the investment firm Waycross Partners had changed Bevin’s biography after it was found his bio stated he had previously served as the director of product management for Invesco, a global investment firm, rather than Invesco-NAM, a Kentucky-based division of the firm.

As McConnell’s team called Bevin out for his misleading information about MIT, saying in the ad, “Newspapers say Bevin was dishonest about his resume,” Bevin fired back, “Clearly, Mitch McConnell — not being part of the real world — doesn’t understand how people in the private sector work… This isn’t even a resume. It’s an online basically database of information of things people have done and where they currently are.

On Tuesday, when the ad started airing, Bevin tweeted, “I wonder what McConnell has on his LinkedIn page. Oh, wait, he’s never had a job in the private sector so why would he need one…”  Another tweet read, “Once again looks like @TeamMitch needs to fire their researchers.”  Bevin’s campaign issued an email saying, “The truth? From 2006 to 2008, Matt Bevin attended the (Entrepreneurs’ Organization)/MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program.”  That is the official name of the program as printed on the certificate he received upon finishing the program.”  The email stated that the ad takes “the childishness of campaign name-calling to a whole new level.”

But the website for the Entrepreneurial Masters Program states clearly,”The Entrepreneurial Masters Program is not recognized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is not a MIT accredited or certified program.”

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.