Posted on 11/03/2010 5:56:25 AM PDT by Colofornian
LAS VEGAS — At polling places across Nevada Tuesday, researchers conducting exit polls asked voters one fundamental question about Harry Reid: Do you approve or disapprove of the way he has handled his job as senator? The results were terrible for the Senate Majority Leader. Fifty-five percent of voters disapproved of the job he has done, while 44 percent approved. Such numbers might seem a sure indicator of defeat, and yet by Tuesday night, Reid was leading his supporters in a victory celebration.
The exit pollsters also asked whether Reid, running for a fifth term in the Senate, has been in Washington too long. Fifty-five percent of voters said yes, while 41 percent said no. And still Reid won.
It's long been common knowledge here that many, many Nevadans don't like their senior senator. What Tuesday's exit polls showed was that their feelings go well beyond simple dislike. And yet, if the exit polls are correct, a significant number of people voted to re-elect a man they think isn't doing a good job and who has stayed too long in the Senate. In the end, Reid won 50.2 percent of the vote to Republican challenger Sharron Angle's 44.6 percent.
It would be hard to find a more telling measure of Angle's deficiencies as a candidate or the devastating effectiveness of Reid's scorched-earth negative campaign against her. Funded by millions of dollars from public-sector unions, Reid relentlessly attacked Angle from the moment she won the GOP nomination. Many of the earliest attacks went unanswered, forming impressions of Angle so negative that they outweighed the voters' negative opinion of Reid.
And then there was Reid's organizational strength. Both Reid and Angle held their election-night parties in Las Vegas casinos, Reid in the new Aria complex and Angle at the Venetian. That's nothing out of the ordinary in Nevada, but the difference between them was that Reid was entirely at home, with the enormous financial power and organizing muscle of the gambling industry and its union allies in his corner, while Angle was relying on votes from people who live far from Las Vegas. Republicans across the country who were hoping for a miracle in this race discovered that raw power wins the day.
And bending the rules, too. On election day there were reports that casino giant Harrah's had worked with the Reid campaign and the unions, particularly the Culinary Workers Union, to herd virtually all unionized employees to early voting stations to vote for Reid. According to a report in National Review Online, one Reid staffer told Harrah's officials that he would do anything -- for emphasis, he wrote it ANYTHING -- to get those workers to the polls.
By mid-day Tuesday, the Nevada Republican Party had filed a complaint with the Secretary of State's office. "Employees' votes were being tracked and supervisors were instructed by top management to personally confront employees to find out why they had not voted," the complaint said. "Further, the evidence shows that Harrah's management has continually communicated to employees their concern with electing Harry Reid and not just to ensure that the employees voted for the candidates of their choice." Such conduct, the complaint argued, violates Nevada law.
Democrats denied any such violations. And the fact is, Reid won by about 40,000 votes, a margin difficult to explain by charges of fraud. Also, squabbling over alleged irregularities tended to obscure the enormous advantage that open union support gave Reid. Nationally, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees spent $91 million trying to elect Democrats. A good chunk of that went to Reid, mostly for get-out-the-vote operations.
Even though they are not a huge part of the electorate, unions gave Reid an important edge. Exit pollsters found that 18 percent of voters had a union member in their household, while 82 percent didn't. The voters who didn't have a union member in the household split right down the middle between Reid and Angle, 48 percent to 48 percent. But among those who did have a union member in their household, Reid won 67 percent to 29 percent.
Every single aspect of the Reid campaign was organized to the max. "For people willing to volunteer, there's a free lunch afterward in the cafeteria," Reid staffers told people waiting in line to see First Lady Michelle Obama at a Reid rally on Monday. Everyone at the rally was given a sheet of paper with the phone numbers of people, presumably Democrats, to call and urge to vote. Speakers at the rally said they wanted to create the "biggest phone bank in the country," which sounded like an exaggeration but did indicate how much emphasis Reid put on getting in touch with voters.
When it comes to Angle's troubled campaign, one last statistic tells the story. The exit pollsters asked voters whether they had a favorable opinion of the Democratic and Republican parties. Among those who said they had a favorable opinion of the Democratic party, Reid won 93 percent of the vote. Of those who said they had a favorable opinion of the Republican party, Angle won 82 percent. Reid did a better job winning Democrats than Angle did winning Republicans.
So in the end, there was Reid onstage at the Aria, smiling as his supporters chanted HAR-EEE! HAR-EEE! HAR-EEE! Never terribly popular, for the last two years, he had defied the voters of his state as he pushed Barack Obama's unpopular agenda through the Senate. And as he did so, unemployment in Nevada climbed to 14.4 percent, the highest in the nation. It was no wonder, then, that a majority of the Nevadans who went to the polls Tuesday disapproved of the way Reid has done his job. The wonder was that he got away with it.
Fraud.
It should be investigated.
Should read: The mob, the unions (redundant), voter fraud "re-elect" harry reid.
And it takes more than a lot to oust an incumbent long term senator.
LDS?
He took the state with Vegas and Reno. His Union buddies bought him the win and it’s well proven with the scandals there.
UNLESS voter fraud carried the day..
Democrats have fine tuned voter fraud for at least 30 years..
With ZERO republican opposition, I might add..
**NOTE: You buy republicans books..... they eat the pages..
Interesting that his numbers increased better following a mysterious power outage during tabulating. No reason for the outage; it just happened. Things that make you go “hmmm...”
Maybe NOW is the time for us to boycott Vegas. Let the idiot voters stew in their own juice, especially since the gaming industry was solidly behing Reid. How stupid ARE they, anyhow? Reid’s beloved Obama single-handedly, with one speech, ruined their economy for months and possibly years.
Let’s just ignore all the Tea Party candidates who made it into office. Let’s ignore all the good they did and focus on a few fraud-drenched elections.
Republicans would have won the states they did because of the Tea Party. They lost those 3 because of the Express. If they had better candidates for those three states, I can understand throwing down but they didn’t.
Taking the house back wasn’t because of the Tea Party Express. It was because of the Tea Party.
And I damn sure wish they’d change their name. They are not affiliated with the real Tea Party. They are only working the coattails of the Tea Party.
They disrupted 3 senate republican primaries. All three are no longer in republican hands for the next 6 years.
They wanted it all but cost us those 3 seats.
And anyone telling me that Angle or Christine O’donnell were good candidates is clueless.
You are correcto. A ham sandwich could have won NV, CO and DE this cycle. Apparently the GOP candidates in those races wasn’t even up to ham sandwich standards.
That’s okay. Reid and Frank and Boxer are just liabilities for the Dems in the long run. They are boat anchors to the Dem party for the future.
Some will argue that Palin’s support for candidates who, (while not really “dumb as a box of rocks), came across as not ready for prime time, will just fuel the story line that Palin herself, while a charismatic figure, is also not ready to be leader of the free world.
I think Sarah Palin will end up being one of the big losers of the night. Too many of her endorsed candidates, who people claimed won their primaries only because of Palin’s endorsement, ended up losing their races.
And if Joe Miller doesn’t pull it out in Alaska, it will clearly show that Palin’s influence is only among a minority that is likely to vote against the democrats in either case. If she wasn’t able to pull her hand-picked candidate over the line in her own state against a write-in candidate, I don’t think that bodes well for her.
Part of being President is being able to put fear in the hearts of those who otherwise wouldn’t support you. She was on her way to doing that with the primary wins — now not so much.
Contrast that with today, when no such character is anywhere to be found--the U.S. newsmedia is a propaganda machine which is itself the epitome of corruption and mendacity--and the American people are perfectly willing to tolerate this sorry situation.
This is the difference: ascendancy and decadence.
Contrast that with today, when no such character is anywhere to be found--the U.S. newsmedia is a propaganda machine which is itself the epitome of corruption and mendacity--and the American people are perfectly willing to tolerate this sorry situation.
This is the difference: ascendancy and decadence.
You are correcto. A ham sandwich could have won NV, CO and DE this cycle. Apparently the GOP candidates in those races wasn’t even up to ham sandwich standards.
These 3 races are where this Tea Party Express derailed the republican frontrunners. They could have throw their money down behind better candidates in places like CO and WA but instead they gave us 6 more years of Reid and 6 years of Coons.
And I am not so sure the republican candidate in AK was much better than the one they had. I know Angle wasn’t better than the republican front-runners in NV.
Sharon Angle's Vote Total by County
Eureka County 69%
Esmeralda County 67.5%
Lincoln County 67.3%
White Pine County 67.3%
Elko County 63.5%
Churchill County 63.4%
Lander County 63.2%
Lyon County 59.9%
Douglas County 59 8.%
Humboldt County 56.9%
Nye County 54.3%
Pershing County 52.7%
Storey County 52.7%
Carson City 48%
Washoe County 44.9%
Mineral County 43.2%
Clark County 41.3%
I know quite a few LDS in Nevada and not one of them were voting for Reid. They can’t stand him and think he is an embarrassment. Sounds more like fraud to me
You may be correct. My Aunt (my Uncle’s wife) huge lds family in NV are very active in politics they are all dems. So I am just going by what they say and how they vote. (Seems like a really big disconnect between their political lives and their personal lives.)
How many of barry’s endorsed candidates won?
Gov Palin was not on the ballot, she lost nothing.
Angle would have to move to Southern Nevada to run against Shelly Berkley. Here in Northern Nevada where she lives we have Dean Heller who is a GREAT Congressman.
At some point it will be clear that comparing any republican to Barack Obama will be a losing proposition.
In the meantime, presidential elections, especially primaries, are all about backing people and getting their support, and showing that you have the political muscle to be a real player.
So you can pretend that because Palin didn’t run for office this year, she is a non-factor; but this is how you get backing and support for a presidential run, and the candidates who would have been her strong supporters had they won are now losers.
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