The Caroline Fayard campaign has a new poll out claiming that they will make the runoff against John Kennedy for the U.S. Senate seat. A poll from GBA Strategies has Kennedy way out in front and Foster Campbell and Caroline Fayard virtually tied for second.

Here are the numbers:

John Kennedy 30%
Foster Campbell 15%
Caroline Fayard 14%
Charles Boustany 11%
John Fleming 9%
Troy Hebert 7%
Rob Maness 6%
Joseph Cao 3%
Josh Pellerin 2%
Undecided 2%

When you average in the numbers of the candidates featured in this and the Lane Grigbsy poll earlier this month, here’s what the race looks like:

John Kennedy: 31%
Foster Campbell: 12%
Charles Boustany: 10%
Caroline Fayard: 9%
John Fleming: 7%
Rob Maness: 5%
Troy Hebert: 4.5%

This seems about right, however we need some more independent polling done in this race.

Joseph Cao and Josh Pellerin were excluded from Lane Grigbsy’s poll. Eric Skrmetta was excluded from Fayard’s poll. Derrick Edwards and Abhay Patel were excluded from both polls.

Here are some thoughts on the state of the Senate race.

1) John Kennedy is still the man to beat, in both the primary and the runoff. Barring any major mistakes, John Kennedy is still the man to beat in this race. Much of this is due to name ID though.

2) John Fleming is showing the most positive movement of any candidate so far. So far, the media blitz the Fleming campaign has launched is paying off. Fleming has begun to put some distance between him and Rob Maness. I was out in Lakeview this weekend and I’ve already seen Fleming signs in people’s yards. The Fleming campaign has already begun stepping up its outreach to social conservatives.

3) Rob Maness needs to start spending money. The Maness campaign is bragging about how they’re outperforming their Senate bid in 2014 in fundraising. However, the campaign continues to suffer from extremely poor name ID for a candidate who ran statewide just 2 years ago. Maness needs to start spending a little money now to improve his poll position or that money and support might start drying up. They can benefit from radio ads, billboards, and internet advertising which don’t cost a whole lot but put his name in front thousands of people weekly and monthly.

4) The runoff will likely be a Democrat vs a Republican. Both polls are showing the same thing, the major candidates in both parties are fighting over a finite number of voters in their party. There is little to no crossover. Which means the runoff in December will likely be a base mobilization election.