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Poll: McCaskill Now Leads Akin By 10% (McCaskill Dubious)

An automated telephone poll conducted Tuesday shows a dramatic turnaround in Senator Claire McCaskill’s fortunes.

But McCaskill is not buying it.

Based on a Rasmussen Reports poll of 500 likely voters in Missouri, McCaskill has jumped to a 10-point lead over her Republican challenger, Congressman Todd Akin, in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race.

On Twitter Thursday, the Senator indicated she doesn’t believe the poll, or the pollster.

Here’s the tweet: “Rasmussen poll made me laugh out loud. If anyone believes that, I just turned 29. Sneaky stuff.”

She offered a link to a news account of the president of Rasmussen Reports schmoozing with Karl Rove and other conservative luminaries just after the November elections — a sign Democrats say shows the pollster is biased toward Republicans.

This is the first poll since Akin’s televised comments about rape and pregnancy prompted many high-profile Republicans to urge him to quit the race.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey finds McCaskill earning 48% support to Akin’s 38%.  Nine percent (9%) like some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

Forty-seven percent of those polled now voiced a “very unfavorable” impression of Akin, compared to 36% for McCaskill. Of those surveyed, just 11% had a “very favorable” impression of Akin, while 19% responded with a “very favorable” impression of McCaskill.

To see the wording of the survey, click here.

The following statement was released by Perry Akin, Campaign Manager for Todd Akin for Senate, in response to the Rasmussen poll released Thursday morning:

“The fact that Claire McCaskill is only polling at 48% after 72 hours of constant negative attacks on Todd Akin shows just how weak she is. If she can’t break fifty percent after a week like this, Democrats should ask Claire to step down. Todd is in this race to win; we will close this gap and win in November with the support of the grassroots in Missouri and across America.”

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