Hawley's got the advantage right now but this is an internal and McCaskill's a good closer. Still think AirClaire pulls this one out.
What suggests McCaskill is a closer? The only outfit to poll the 2012 race twice this late was PPP, and they had her lead shrinking.
That doesn't make her a closer; it just makes her the person who got to run against Todd Akin.
Additional info: In 2004, it was also around this time that she began to slip further behind Blunt. The only race where she clearly expanded her polling advantage from this point forward was 2006, and that could be attributed to the national wave for Democrats. She still underperformed most of the late polling in that race.
I would be surprised of Hawley wins by that much, but right now my rating for this race would be Tilt R. This pollster does have a historical Republican bias of 1.1%, so I would adjust it down to Hawley +6.
Nonetheless, I have heard reports that Hawley's internals are very consistently showing him in the lead, and most publicly released polls in the last month have corroborated that. Although it may very well be that campaigns tend only release their best internals, thus leading to some apparent bias, I think it's wrong to assume that all internals inherently favor the candidate paying for them. After all, the candidate more than anyone else has the most need for an accurate picture of the race. If they're being fed biased and rose-tinted polls, they're only harming themselves.
My guess at this moment is somewhere around Hawley +2.
The issue isn't that the polls are inaccurate, just that they might be withholding polls to influence the race.
