Pro-Abortion Senate Leader Reid Now Leads Pro-Life Sharron Angle in Nevada
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 28, 2010
Carson City, NV (LifeNews.com) — Harry Reid, the pro-abortion leader of the Democrats in the Senate, now leads pro-life Senate candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada. Following her primary election victory, Angle cruised out to a sizable lead over Reid, but now a new Rasmussen Reports poll finds Angle trailing.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Nevada finds Reid with 45% of the vote, while Angle earns 43% support. Seven percent favor another candidate while four percent are undecided.
The problem for both candidates is a large percentage of Nevada voters have negative views of them — with 48% of the state’s voters having a very unfavorable view of Reid and 40 percent saying the same thing about Angle.
Overall, 55% have at least a somewhat unfavorable opinion of Reid and 56% view Angle at least somewhat unfavorably.
Sixty-two percent describe the longtime Democratic senator as a liberal, and 50% characterize his views as extreme, but Angle fares no better. She is seen as a conservative by 81% of the state’s voters and 58 percent say she holds extreme views.
"Not surprisingly, Democrats tend to see Reid’s views as mainstream and Angle’s views as extreme. Republicans hold the opposite perspective. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, 55% consider Reid’s views extreme while 52% say the same about Angle," pollster Scott Rasmussen noted.
Rasmussen said his firm is now ranking the race as leaning towards Reid as opposed to its previous status as a tossup.
"Reid has long been considered one of the most vulnerable senators up for reelection this November, and prior to this month, his support has remained in the narrow range of 38% to 41%. He picked up just 39% of the vote following Angle’s primary victory and has seen his own numbers improve to 41% in late June, 43% in early July, and 45% today," he said. "These findings suggest that Reid has so far been successful at making the race more about Angle and less about himself."
Jim Geraghty, a writer at the conservative National Review, called the new numbers "abysmal" — especially when Rasmussen finds 49 percent of Nevadans “strongly disapprove” of Obama’s job performance, and 48 percent “strongly disapprove” of Reid’s job performance.
But he says the pro-life candidate still has a shot against the abortion promoter.
"I’ve talked to Nevada Republicans who aren’t giving up. Some of them say that Angle is getting a bit better at message discipline, focusing on emphasizing her message instead of getting drawn into what Reid and his allies want to talk about," he writes.
"She’s bringing in new staffers, and she still has an easier task, of simply convincing Nevadans she’s better than an incumbent whom they have decided they don’t like," Geraghty added.
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