Reid's Play for Women Voters Backfiring

Harry Reid's attack ads have driven up Sharron Angle's negatives amongst female voters. Yet, at the same time, Angle's share of women voters has risen.

The new Rasmussen poll on the Nevada Senate race continues to show something approximating a tie between Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican challenger Sharron Angle, with each a garnering 48 percent of the vote among likely voters.  In the same poll two weeks ago, Reid was ahead slightly 50 to 47.

The main change in this poll was the split among women.  In the September 1 poll, Reid was getting 62 percent of women but in the current survey he’s down to 54 percent.  Angle’s share of women voters rose from 35 percent to 40 percent with the balance sliding into the undecided column.

Reid appears to be responding aggressively to this downtick among women with hard-hitting, negative ads that highlight some of Angle’s less well considered statements on gun rights, “Second Amendment remedies”, abortions for victims of rape and incest (Reid is nominally pro-life), and whether the Social Security and Medicare programs are an offense to the Almighty.  The underlying theme is extremism with grainy black-and-white footage of right-wing militias in training.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I6GELJwJho

Angle has responded by blaming the economy on Reid-Pelosi-Obama including Nevada’s worst-in-the-nation unemployment rate and the collapse in home values.  “And he calls me extreme,” she concludes.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbMmxaUh5BA

Reid is hitting Angle as hard and fast as he can.  And, by normal political standards, it would appear to be working.  Over the past 12 days, Angle’s unfavorables have jumped from 41 percent to 55 percent; among women her unfavorables have gone from a bad 56 percent to an appalling 64 percent.  (Reid’s negatives remain unchanged at 51 percent.)  If Reid’s internals look the same as the public polling, he must be scratching his head:  How can we have driven up Angle’s negatives among women to such stratospheric heights and lost their votes at the same time?

The answer to this question may be as much one of tone as substance.  Reid appears only by voice in the taglines of his ads, “I’m Harry Reid, and I approved this message.”  Angle’s response ad is a “positive negative”:  she stands before the camera, looking relaxed and pleasant ticking through her economic message – hard-hitting, confident and reassuring, perhaps even senatorial.  Could it be that this approach is actually defusing the attacks and negating Reid’s overwhelming financial advantage?  Time will tell.  If Reid wins this race, it will probably be the product not of a better air campaign but because he has invested time, energy and money in a grind-it-out ground game that allows him to squeak to the narrowest of victories.