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Poll: Harry Reid's Senate Support Slipping
Support for Sen. Harry Reid has slipped since he became Senate minority leader in November 2004, according to a newspaper poll.
The percentage of Nevada voters who viewed the Democratic senator favorably dropped by 10 percentage points since 2004 to 43 percent, while the number who viewed him unfavorably increased 14 points to 39 percent, according to a poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The poll surveyed 625 regular voters April 3-5 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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Analysts say Reid's prominent position in the party may have turned off voters who viewed him as independent. As the leader of the opposition in the Senate, Reid has been tagged by many Republicans as "obstructionist."
"This is the problem that any national leader faces within his state," said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "He has to take some positions nationally that probably do hurt him back in Nevada, and he has to be more outspoken."
Reid spokeswoman Sharyn Stein said the senator "is willing to take gutsy and sometimes controversial stands in his fight for change ... rather than following polls."
Brad Coker, a managing partner Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., which conducted the survey, said the prominent national position can be a burden.
"Becoming Senate minority leader doesn't always help with the folks back home. Just ask Tom Daschle," Coker said.
Daschle, a three-term senator from South Dakota and Reid's predecessor as Senate minority leader, lost his re-election race in an upset in 2004.
© 2006 Associated Press.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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