Harry Reid's Dire Re-Election Prospects

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada and Senate Democrat Majority Leader has to push through the Democrat socialist agenda in the Senate.  This makes it impossible for him to pretend to Nevadans that he is a centrist or anything but a committed socialist.  The other Nevada Senator is the Republican John Ensign.  Obama did narrowly beat McCain in the 2008 election, but the voters are remorseful now.  In fact, they are very remorseful.  Obama had a favorable rating in Nevada of 55% in May, 44% in December, and for 5 - 7 January it was down to 34%.  His unfavorable rating is now 46%, up from 30% in May.

According to the Nevada Secretary of State's Voter Registration and Active/Inactive voter lists, the breakdown on Nevada's active voters is:

Democrat   494,316
Republican   410,198
Non-Partisan  174,663
Independent American  47,112

There are additional minor parties such as the Green Party (848) and the Libertarians (6,666).  The Independent American Party was until 1998 the Utah Independent American Party.  It is a Constitution-loving and conservative party, which endorsed the presidential candidate of the Constitution Party in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.  Some members of this conservative party may find it worthwhile to vote for a Republican in order to get rid of Reid.

The Nevada Review Journal had a poll of Nevadans taken by the Mason-Dixon pollers by telephone from 5-7 January and Reid is in deep trouble.  625 registered Nevada voters were interviewed and the mragin of error is 4%.  49% viewed Ried unfavorably, while only 38% thought favorably of this 4-term Senator.  Each of the three top-running Republicans would beat him according to the poll results in the 2010 election.  Sue Lowden, the Republican Party chairwoman of Nevada, would beat him 50% to 40%.  Danny Tarkanian, a businessman and former UNLV basketball star, would beat him 49% to 41%.  Sharron Angle, a former Reno assemblywoman, would beat him 45% to 40%.  Note that in each case, he gets about 40% of the vote, despite the fact that Sharron Angle is very little known in the state.  In other words, he gets the die-hard Democrat vote, but not much else.  In each of these three match-ups, Reid only gets about one-quarter of the independent vote.  Lowden gets 59%, Tarkanian gets 56%, and Angle, the unknown, gets 53%.  In other words, the independent voters want nothing to do with Harry Reid!  They do not even have to know the person running against him.

It may not be over for Harry Reid, however.  He is expected to have a $25 million war-chest.  But he will have to be very successful in buying all the votes that money can buy.  Such a war-chest is a lot more effective when the People have not already decided that they do not like the politician backed by the money.  So, let us hope that Reid has Tom Daschle disease.  Daschle was the Democrat Leader of the Senate whom the People of South Dakota threw out in 2004 after he proved more socialist in his leadership role than they could stand.