Add Karl Rove to the list of Republicans trying to discount recent New York Times/Kaiser polling in U.S. Senate races in the South, particularly the 10-point lead found for Sen. Mark Pryor over Republican opponent Tom Cotton.

It was only the latest in a series of polls favoring Pryor, but Rove isn’t having it, Talking Points Memo reports. 

“I accept the fact that this is going to be a hard fought battle to the end and many of these races are tossups. But let’s put aside for the moment The New York Times and Kaiser Family Foundation poll because it was badly done,” Rove said Wednesday on Fox News.

Bill Kristol, leader of the Tom Cotton Fan Club in Washington, had earlier made a similar points about a seemingly too-narrow Republican edge of respondents in saying how they voted for president in 2012. 

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Nate Cohn at The Upshot, the Times blog, has already taken apart this criticism in some detail.

Sure. This race isn’t over until November. The significant development is the trend in recent polling. Tom Cotton has not caught fire, perhaps because voters are beginning to understand how oddly extreme he is. Karl Rove and Bill Kristol can read the trend line as well as anyone. What they expected to be a walkover on a par with the defeat of Blanche Lincoln isn’t going to happen. These masters of narrative aren’t happy when they see one developing that threatens to overwhelm their own.

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