The new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of Nevada has Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid leading all three of his Republican challengers — a big turnaround from his deficits in previous polls.
Reid leads former state Rep. Sharron Angle by 43%-37%, leads former state GOP chair Sue Lowden by 42%-38%, and leads ex-UNLV basketball player Danny Tarkanian by 43%-39%. The survey of likely voters has a margin of error. In the previous R2K poll from just over a month ago, all three GOP candidates had single-digit leads over Reid.
Reid has trailed his GOP opponents all cycle long, but the candidates themselves have been suffering from all sorts of missteps — Lowden over her call for people to barter health care, which was ridiculed by Democrats as “Chickens For Checkups”; Angle’s right-wing Tea Party stances have been subjected to public scrutiny, and Lowden has attacked her for alleged ties to Scientology; and Tarkanian has in a way simply remained invisible, with some focus on illegal immigration.
Kos writes: “Nevada really wanted to fire Harry Reid. Then they took a gander at his opposition, and suddenly even he is looking pretty good in comparison.”