Rasmussen: Angle leads Reid 50/46

Rasmussen joins a series of fresh polls showing renewed momentum in the Senate race in Nevada for challenger Sharron Angle over incumbent Harry Reid.  Two weeks ago, Reid held a one-point edge in a virtual tie, 48/47.  Today, Angle nearly outpaces the margin of error and reaches the majority level at 50/46:

Republican challenger Sharron Angle has now moved to a four-point lead over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada’s bare-knuckles U.S. Senate race.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Nevada Voters shows Angle hitting the 50% mark for the first time since mid-August, while Reid earns 46% of the vote. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and two percent (2%) more are undecided.

The sample Rasmussen uses for its survey has a seven-point advantage for Democrats (Rasmussen now has that data for its Platinum subscription members). Barack Obama won the state in 2008 by just over twelve points, but that was an example of overachievement for Democrats in the state.  Nevada had gone twice for George W. Bush, including the razor-thin 2000 election, where Bush won by 3.5%.  As a sample of likely voters, the D/R/I of 41/35/24 most likely overstates Democratic participation and understates independent voters, but it’s at least in the ballpark — and since it overly favors Democrats, is even worse news for Harry Reid.

Harry Reid’s attempts to demonize Angle have largely failed.  Her favorability ratings are identical to Reid’s, 47/52.  That may normally be good news in a race for an incumbent, but not in a markedly anti-incumbent environment.  Reid needed to make Angle a quantum leap worse than himself in order to avoid the inevitable referendum on the Democratic agenda he has championed for the last four years especially.

Furthermore, he’s about out of time, since 83% of all voters are now “certain” of their candidates, with only 9% admitting they can be convinced yet.  That’s actually slightly more true of Democrats at 91% than of Republicans at 87%, but that’s not necessarily good news either for Reid, who’s only holding 86% of his own party.  That means that some Democrats are convinced not to vote for Reid, while 89% of Republicans are going with Angle.

Independents are lining up strongly with Angle, especially among leaners.  Before adding in the leaners, Angle has a 49/31 lead, but with leaners, it goes to 61/33.  It appears that all of the late-breaking voters are flocking to Angle, which is exactly what one would expect in an environment like this.  For instance, 60% of voters want ObamaCare repealed, the same percentage oppose the individual mandate, and 70% think the economy is getting worse or not improving.  Among independents, those numbers are, respectively, 70%, 73%, and 72% — with the last having 61% say that the economy is getting worse.

With those positions, independents are hardly going to decide at the last minute to endorse the status quo.  This four-point gap should expand even further in the next few weeks, regardless of Harry Reid’s advertising budget.