Monday, February 01, 2010

Harry Reid – Fundraising Ability versus the Reality of a Low Job Approval Rating – Money, in some instances, can’t buy a Senate Seat.


Harry Reid Stands to Lose Senate Seat - image LA Times Blog


Recent articles regarding Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid’s, ability to raise large sums of cash (and then spend it in a heartbeat), have appeared in several papers over the past week, of interest is one that appeared in the Washignton Post on January 29th. Although Reid had amassed approximately $2,000,000 for his campaign, he immediately spent it on advertising, perhaps in the hopes of improving his image with Nevadans. Reid’s currently polling between 8 and 10 points behind one of the republican challengers, Danny Tarkanian. Public Policy Polling, an allegedly left centered polling institute has Reid with an 8 point disadvantage at this point in the game. Public Policy Polling has correctly called races for Govenor (New Jersey and Virginia) and the U.S. Senate (Massachusetts).

Polling began back in August on this particular race, and the numbers have remained fairly consistent.

Comparing Harry Reid to Tom Daschle - Reids Numbers Much Lower - image broadcast blog

From an historical standpoint, the last majority leader of the Senate (and the first to lose his seat as an incumbent) was Tom Daschle, who’s poll numbers going into the end of the race, showed a smaller margin against his challenger Republican John Thune. Daschle apparrenlty had a higher job approval rating than Reid currently holds, however, his constant gaffes and his role of “attack dog” for the Kerry campaign, eventfully led to his demise. Reid, has had consistently low approval ratings: as late as January 10th, of this year Reids approval was at 33% and has remained at that approximate number since August.

Therefore, keeping in mind that historically, Daschle, the last Democrat Senate Majority Speaker who lost his seat had much better polling and approval rankings within his own state, more money, at this point is not going to save Harry Reid’s seat. All politics being local, it will be the Nevadans who determine Reid’s fate, and their main objective appears to be one of a fairly consistent desire to remove him from office. Another factor: Reid’s opposition is not yet determined (there are two Republican’s vying for the nomination who fare almost equally well against Reid in polls), once the opposition is set, the grassroots supporters as well as the GOP, will surely push that candidate’s war chest equal to or past Reid’s. Therefore, spending $2,000,000 here or $10,000,000 there will have the same effect as riding a stimulus backed pork-laden monorail to nowhere. Although too early to call any 2010 races, one can, based on the aforementioned data, be fairly certain that Reid will not be returning to the U.S. Senate.

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