Democratic Rep. Paul Davis is surging ahead of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback in a new poll as both campaigns race against the clock for votes.

The poll, from Rasmussen Reports, shows Davis with 52 percent support and Brownback at 45 percent among likely voters. The poll shows only 1 percent preferring another candidate and 2 percent undecided. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Among voters who say they "will definitely" vote, Davis’ lead increases to 53 percent. Rasmussen surveyed 960 likely voters Monday and Tuesday.

The Brownback campaign called the new results unreliable because the poll was conducted during the World Series involving the Kansas City Royals. Game 1 of the World Series took place on Tuesday in Kansas City, Mo.

Rasmussen’s new poll gives Davis the largest lead he has had in polling since an early August Rasmussen poll showed the lawmaker up 10 percentage points.

According to the Insight Kansas polling aggregation project, the race had been tightening in recent weeks. Three polls earlier in October gave Brownback either the lead or had the race as a tie. But a poll early this week from Monmouth University in New Jersey gave Davis a 5 percentage point lead. Additionally, a Gravis Marketing poll released Wednesday showed Davis ahead 49 percent to 44 percent.

Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political science professor who is part of the Insight Kansas project, said polling like this late in the race could have contributed to Brownback’s decision to run an ad this week injecting the Carr brothers — the Wichita pair who had the capital murder death sentences against them overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court — into the race.

Jonathan and Reginald Carr were convicted of killing four people in 2000 in Wichita. The Kansas Supreme Court overturned their death sentences in July.

"You might gain some voters, but you might turn off some voters, so you really don’t want to do that unless your polling is showing you may want to give it a try," Beatty said.

In response to the Rasmussen poll, the Brownback campaign released a memo from its internal pollster, Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates. The document, dated Oct. 22, paints a more rosy picture of the race for the Republican candidate.

The memo says the internal polling shows the contest to be "statistically tied."

The memo, from Pat McFerron, the firm’s president, doesn’t contain actual internal polling numbers. Brownback spokesman John Milburn declined to provide the campaign’s internal polling percentages.

The memo does shed light on the campaign’s decision to make the Carr brothers an issue in the race this week. In a TV ad and during a debate this week, Brownback has sought to link the Supreme Court justices to Davis, claiming Justice Carol Beier hosted a fundraiser in her home for Davis.

While Beier’s husband did hold an event at their home, neither Beier nor Davis attended.

"Our polling shows that when voters are informed of Davis’ relationships with the supreme court justices and reminded of that court’s decision to overthrow the conviction and sentencing of the Carr brothers, they break against Davis by a better than five-to-one ratio," the memo says.

The Davis campaign blamed Brownback’s slip in the polls on the governor’s tactics.

"Kansans are deeply concerned about Sam Brownback’s failed experiment, and his ugly campaign tactics are clearly backfiring. That’s why, despite millions (of dollars) in disgraceful attacks on Paul, Brownback is trailing in recent polls," Davis spokesman Chris Pumpelly said.

This week’s Rasmussen poll is the fourth the firm has done of the race since April.