As expected, networks project victory for Mitch McConnell in Kentucky

Polls in Ken­tucky have now closed, and news net­works are pro­ject­ing that Mitch McConnell has been reelect­ed as Ken­tuck­y’s senior U.S. Sen­a­tor, defeat­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Ali­son Lun­der­gan Grimes.

Grimes raised a lot of mon­ey and ran a cred­i­ble cam­paign in the eyes of many observers, but found going up against “Sen­a­tor Grid­lock” to be an incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult task. McConnell, a vet­er­an cam­paign­er, stuck to his strat­e­gy of run­ning against Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and did just about every­thing pos­si­ble to put Grimes on the defen­sive for the dura­tion of the campaign.

The ear­ly num­bers indi­cate he will pre­vail with a fair­ly com­fort­able mar­gin of victory.

Grimes’ team tried might­i­ly to put dis­tance between her­self and Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, hop­ing to blunt attacks by McConnell and the Repub­li­can Par­ty, but it did­n’t work.

A telling moment came late in the cam­paign, when Grimes was asked dur­ing debates if she vot­ed for Oba­ma in 2008 and 2012.

Rather than sim­ply say­ing yes and piv­ot­ing to go on offense, she refused to answer, and her prin­ci­pled stalling became a major sto­ry. Grimes found her­self mocked on late night TV for refus­ing to sim­ply give an upfront response.

Grimes did do a good job (at times) of attack­ing McConnel­l’s record and pil­lo­ry­ing him for his oppo­si­tion to rais­ing the min­i­mum wage and enact­ing equal pay for equal work. But McConnell nev­er seemed fazed by Grimes or her campaign.