SurveyUSA for the Louisville Courier-Journal and WHAS-TV. 3/1-3. Likely voters. MoE 4.7% for GOP primary, 4.1% for Dem primary. (10/30-11/02 results in parenthesis):
Rand Paul (R) 42 (35)
Trey Grayson (R) 27 (32)
Dan Mongiardo (D) 45 (39)
Jack Conway (D) 27 (28)
Mongiardo came within inches of unseating Jim Bunning in 2004, but has been a bit of an asshole this campaign. Still, he has the early line on the Democratic nomination. Rand Paul should run away with the GOP nomination, in the face of a horrified GOP establishment. While Paul may be right on his views about coal ("dirty", and "one of the least favorable forms of energy"), it's not the sort of thing that gets you elected in coal-rich, and coal-dependent Kentucky.
SUSA, for whatever bizarre reason, didn't poll these four candidates head-to-head in the general, opting instead for a generic Democratic vs Republican Candidate matchup. In that contest, the Republicans came out ahead 43-43 percent, a statistical dead heat.
Kentucky is now crimson red at the federal level, and getting there at the local level as well. Yet in this supposed GOP-dominant year, in the Southern state that gave us both Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell and elected McCain by a 16-point margin, we have a tied Senate race.
Seems like rumors of impending Democratic doom this November are greatly exaggerated.
Update: Apparently, I'm stuck in 2005, since the state isn't trending GOP anymore. Here's an overview that's a couple of years old, but still instructive. Dems have retaken the governorship, romped in all but one statewide elected office in 2007. In 2009 alone, Democrats picked up three state Senate seats in special elections. It is now 20-17 Republican. Democrats still have a dominant 65-35 edge in the Kentucky House. And of course, in 2006, John Yarmuth ousted Rep. Anne Northup in the 3rd CD.
So yeah, Kentucky isn't trending red at the local level. We saw some of that in the early 2000s, but those GOP gains are being reversed.