Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. AP Photo
For the first time in the better part of the last year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has reason for optimism as he looks toward his re-election prospects this fall.
A new poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Media Research for the Las Vegas Journal shows Reid has pulled into a statistical dead heat with his two most likely Republican challengers this fall: former state party chairwoman Sue Lowden and former state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle.
Reid takes 42 percent to 39 percent for Angle while Lowden stands at 42 percent to 39 percent for Reid. Back in an April Mason-Dixon survey, Lowden held a 47 percent to 37 percent edge over Reid.
Reid's image in the state has also improved over the last six weeks. Back in April, 33 percent of Nevada voters had a favorable impression of him while 54 percent saw him in an unfavorable light. In this poll, Reid's favorable score stood at 37 percent while his unfavorable rating was at 49 percent.
While Democrats are certain to seize on these results to suggest that Reid is on the comeback trail, there are plenty of reasons to take such analysis cum grano salis.
The main one is that Reid appears to be benefiting from the increasingly nasty primary fight between Angle, Lowden and, to a lesser extent, businessman Danny Tarkanian.
Lowden, the one-time clear frontrunner, has struggled mightily to get out from under a self-inflicted wound caused by comments about a health care system based on bartering -- with chickens. (Yes, chickens.)
Combine that gaffe with an increased focus on her brief record as a state legislator -- courtesy of a tough ad from the Club for Growth, which is supporting Angle -- and it's no surprise that the polling shows a genuine drop off for Lowden not just in her head to head matchup with Reid but also in her own favorability ratings.
While Republicans are bashing each other on the television airwaves, Reid is running a trio of ads touting the benefits for Nevadans of the health care bill -- a nice politics vs. policy contrast that is likely accruing to his benefit as well.
At issue for Reid is what we have taken to calling the "Corzine conundrum". That is, how does an incumbent who is universally known in his or her state -- not even one percent of Nevada voters said they didn't recognize Reid's name -- and pulling between 37 percent and 43 percent support in hypothetical general election matchups win?
Thanks to a great poll archive on the Review Journal site, we can look at where Reid has stood in polls over the last six months (or so). Here's his BEST showing in any of the possible general election matchups by month:
May 2010: 42 percent
April 2010: 37 percent
February 2010: 42 percent
January 2010: 41 percent
December 2009: 42 percent
Given those numbers, what is Reid's path to 50 percent plus one? There's really only one: disqualify the Republican nominee.
Reid will certainly have the financial resources to do just that. He ended April with $9.4 million in the bank as compared to $289,000 for Lowden and $120,000 for Angle.
But, disqualifying an opponent is easier said than done -- particularly when there is real skepticism about the messenger. Given that, the most important time in the race may be the first month of the general election. Can Reid define either Lowden, Angle (or maybe even Tarkanian) in such a negative light that they can't recover? And, if not, what does he do next?
comments:
IMO...
Baggers like Rand Paul and Sue Lowden present BHO with such a grooved fastball down the middle. They have already made enough racist and foolish statements (Abolishing the minimum wage? Chickens for Checkups?) to fill a year's worth of political attack ads. But BHO and his party don't seem to have the stomach to take them on.
BHO continues to whiff at their pitches, even the weak stuff like the Joe Sestak fake ocntroversy (BHO clearly should have ignored it all together or just pointed out that Bush One and Ray-Gun did precisely what he did with Joe--a two-day story at most if properly handled).
By contrast, week after week, BHO's opposition is able to tee up ridiculous, fact-free fake controversies and keep them going for weeks or not months, see, e.g., birthers.
________________
Never thought I'd say this but...they need to move HRC inside the White House as COS, Deputy COS, something, so her unbridled vengeance-fueled, pants-suited energy is put to good use. HRC would have had the baggers for lunch, IMO.
Mrs. Wm. Jefferson Clinton, forgive Fix for his insulting and profane video about you. Your country needs you now.
Harry Reid is backed by voters who know him and like him and will shoe up at the polls. The assortment of half-wits, wishful-thinkers and troglodytes thrown up by the GOP a become less popular the more the voters hear from them.
Reid's 432% will make it to the polls in November. The GOP voters will be unmotivated.
Love the quote from Marc Ambinder:
"Here is something I don't think Republican strategists in Washington...many of them, anyway, understand about conservative voters now. Their discontent with the [Republican] party is NOT about ideology. It is, quite simply, about them. The consultants. The leaders. The people who were NOT able to prevent Obama from becoming president. The people who were NOT able to prevent health care from being signed into law, despite promising that it wouldn't be. The people who fed the bailout engine. So ideas that seem extreme and bizarre to the powers that be [in the Republican party] might be more accepted by discontented voters simply because the mainstream forces consider them to be extreme."
Baggers like Rand Paul and Sue Lowden present BHO with such a grooved fastball down the middle. They have already made enough racist and foolish statements (Abolishing the minimum wage? Chickens for Checkups?) to fill a year's worth of political attack ads. But BHO and his party don't seem to have the stomach to take them on.
BHO continues to whiff at their pitches, even the weak stuff like the Joe Sestak fake ocntroversy (BHO clearly should have ignored it all together or just pointed out that Bush One and Ray-Gun did precisely what he did with Joe--a two-day story at most if properly handled).
By contrast, week after week, BHO's opposition is able to tee up ridiculous, fact-free fake controversies and keep them going for weeks or not months, see, e.g., birthers.
________________
Never thought I'd say this but...they need to move HRC inside the White House as COS, Deputy COS, something, so her unbridled vengeance-fueled, pants-suited energy is put to good use. HRC would have had the baggers for lunch, IMO.
Mrs. Wm. Jefferson Clinton, forgive Fix for his insulting and profane video about you. Your country needs you now.
Harry Reid is backed by voters who know him and like him and will shoe up at the polls. The assortment of half-wits, wishful-thinkers and troglodytes thrown up by the GOP a become less popular the more the voters hear from them.
Reid's 432% will make it to the polls in November. The GOP voters will be unmotivated.
Love the quote from Marc Ambinder:
"Here is something I don't think Republican strategists in Washington...many of them, anyway, understand about conservative voters now. Their discontent with the [Republican] party is NOT about ideology. It is, quite simply, about them. The consultants. The leaders. The people who were NOT able to prevent Obama from becoming president. The people who were NOT able to prevent health care from being signed into law, despite promising that it wouldn't be. The people who fed the bailout engine. So ideas that seem extreme and bizarre to the powers that be [in the Republican party] might be more accepted by discontented voters simply because the mainstream forces consider them to be extreme."
It's good to read that Nevada voters are swinging back toward Harry Reid, once they got a better look at the two non-mainstream Republican frontrunners.
Marc Ambinder, writing in the Atlantic, says this: "Here is something I don't think Republican strategists in Washington...many of them, anyway, understand about conservative voters now. Their discontent with the [Republican] party is NOT about ideology. It is, quite simply, about them. The consultants. The leaders. The people who were NOT able to prevent Obama from becoming president. The people who were NOT able to prevent health care from being signed into law, despite promising that it wouldn't be. The people who fed the bailout engine. So ideas that seem extreme and bizarre to the powers that be [in the Republican party] might be more accepted by discontented voters simply because the mainstream forces consider them to be extreme."
He was writing about Rand Paul's idea to repeal the 17th Amendment, but it applies to the Nevada race as well.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/kill-the-17th-amendment/57323/
Marc Ambinder, writing in the Atlantic, says this: "Here is something I don't think Republican strategists in Washington...many of them, anyway, understand about conservative voters now. Their discontent with the [Republican] party is NOT about ideology. It is, quite simply, about them. The consultants. The leaders. The people who were NOT able to prevent Obama from becoming president. The people who were NOT able to prevent health care from being signed into law, despite promising that it wouldn't be. The people who fed the bailout engine. So ideas that seem extreme and bizarre to the powers that be [in the Republican party] might be more accepted by discontented voters simply because the mainstream forces consider them to be extreme."
He was writing about Rand Paul's idea to repeal the 17th Amendment, but it applies to the Nevada race as well.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/kill-the-17th-amendment/57323/
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