New Rasmussen poll shows Coakley lead shrinking, Khazei rising.

A new poll released this evening by Rasmussen shows that Martha Coakley's lead in the special Senate election is shrinking.

The poll of likely Democratic voters found that 36% support Coakley, 21% support Mike Capuano, 14% support Steve Pagliuca, and 14% support Alan Khazei.

That is the highest number Khazei has pulled in any polls to date.

Update: I can't access the cross tabs because I'm not a Rasmussen premium customer, but wanted to add some further dissection of the poll.

For starters, I should note that Rasmussen did an earlier poll on this race.  And when I say earlier, I mean EARLIER.  That first poll, conducted on September 9, asked voters who they would vote for if the candidates were Coakley, Capuano, Lynch, Meehan, Markey, or Tierney.  Yikes.

Obviously, there have been some developments in the campaign since then, so most of the numbers from that first poll need to be thrown out.  But here's what can be useful:

--In the first poll, Coakley led the field with 38%, Capuano pulled 7%, other candidates combined for 29%, and 25% were undecided.

--Coakley had 67% favorables vs. 17% unfavorables, with 17% unsure about her.

--Capuano had 27% favorables, 25% unfavorables, and a whopping 47% percent of respondents were unsure about him.

In the poll results released today (the poll of 567 likely Dem primary voters was conducted yesterday), Coakley's number had dropped to 36%.  A very minor drop to be sure, especially since undecideds are down to 10%, and nobody is within 10 percentage points of her.

Some other toplines from today's poll:

--Coakley's favorables dropped to 61%, and her unfavorables rose to 30%.  Just 8% remain undecided about her.

--Capuano actually posted better favorable numbers than Coakley at 62% (Her "very" favorables beat him 31%-22%, although her "very" unfavorables beat him too 14%-11%), with his unfavorables holding steady at 26%.  His undecided number has dropped from 47% to 12%.

--Alan Khazei posted 47% favorables vs. 31% unfavorables, with 22% still unsure about him.

--Steve Pagliuca has 49% favorables, vs. the field's highest unfavorables at 37%.  14% remain undecided about Pags.