Harry Reid, Sharron Angle Senate Race Back to a Tie in Nevada

bruce-drake

Bruce Drake

Contributing Editor
Posted:
07/30/10
After a poll showing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moving into a modest if clear lead over Republican Sharron Angle following a barrage of campaign ads depicting her as a fringe candidate, the Nevada Senate race has tightened up again after Angle got on the scoreboard with ads of her own, according to a Mason-Dixon Research poll conducted July 26-28 for the Las Vegas Journal-Review/KLAS-TV.

Reid draws 43 percent of the vote to Angle's 42 percent with 9 percent preferring none of the choices before them and 6 percent undecided. The margin of error is 4 points.

Sharron Angle, Harry ReidAs she struggled to pull together her general election campaign after the hotly-contested GOP nomination fight, Angle raised $2.6 million last quarter -- compared to $2.4 million for the better-funded Reid -- which enabled her to air two ads, one of which hit hard at Reid for the state of Nevada's economy in which unemployment has reached 14.2 percent, the Journal-Review said.

A mid-July poll for the Journal-Review, conducted before Angle's ads, had put Reid out in front 44 percent to 37 percent. Two others -- by Public Policy Polling in mid-July and Rasmussen reports on July 27 -- had the pair statistically-tied. The Rasmussen poll found that both candidates suffered from high negatives, a clear result of the advertising campaigns.

"At least for the moment, (Angle) seems to have stopped the bleeding," said Mason-Dixon's Brad Coker. "Reid had the airwaves to himself for a while, and he drove her numbers down with the advertising. But that didn't necessarily drive his numbers up. There hasn't been a lot of good news to hang his hat on."

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