As the Republican Party forges ahead this election season in an attempt to capture the Senate, a critical race in Kansas is starting to look like it could upset some conservatives come Nov. 4. An NBC/Marist poll released this weekend shows that Republican incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts is trailing independent candidate Greg Orman by 10 percent in the state.
The survey shows Roberts at 38 percent and Orman at 48 percent in what is sure to be an interesting Democrat-free election. Kansas Democratic nominee Chad Taylor dropped out Sept. 3.
But Roberts, an establishment Republican, isn't just lacking in the poll numbers. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the senator is also quite unpopular with his constituents. Nearly half of likely Kansas voters have an "unfavorable view of a guy who's been one of their senators since 1997," said the Monitor.
Many Kansas voters are simply fed up with how both Republicans and Democrats are performing in Washington, said Marist, and a loss in Kansas could signal disaster for the GOP in the November primaries resulting in failure to takeover the Senate.
One big reason Roberts is behind, according to the Monitor, is due to him not even owning a home in Kansas, resulting in voters not seeing him as one of them, but an outsider. This, coupled with Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback's big tax cuts that "have led to big cuts in education and other state programs without (yet) spurring a leap in economic growth," has caused many Kansans to look outside of the two-party system.
However, some are not convinced of the weight of the Marist poll. FiveThiryEight poll analyst Harry Enten noted that Marist polls typically lean a few points Democratic, and while FiveThiryEight's election forecast does give Orman a 65 percent chance at victory, the site predicts the GOP still has a 59.4 percent chance of taking the Senate.
A CBS/YouGov poll released last week shows Roberts with 36 percent and Orman with 35 percent.
