Last week’s Rasmussen poll showed Brian Sandoval up by 10 points over Rory Reid in Nevada’s race for governor. Now, a survey conducted by Mason-Dixon for the Las Vegas Review Journal has Sandoval beating Reid by 19 points. The poll says 50 percent of voters support Sandoval, 31 percent favor Reid, and 14 percent remain undecided. Sandoval leads by double digits in every demographic group other than Democrats, and even eighteen percent of them support Sandoval. Reid earned support from just 3 percent of Republicans.
Sandoval’s good standing with some Democrats can likely be attributed to his reputation as a moderate, a fact that did not exactly endear him to the conservative wing of the Republican base during the primaries, but which now stands to help him in the general election. Given Sandoval and the alternative–the tall, thin man who reminds them of someone they know and don’t love–Republicans are now lining up in support of Sandoval.
When asked whether Rory Reid’s family connection to the Senate majority leader makes them less likely to vote for him, 33 percent of those surveyed said it does, while 60 percent said it has no effect. Whether these numbers really reflect the severity of the “Reid fatigue” we’ve all been talking about since last fall is anyone’s guess, but it certainly does not help either candidate to have two Reids on the November ballot.
In the Review-Journal story about the poll, Guy Rocha, a seasoned Nevada political historian, rightly pointed out that Reid needs to carry Clark County, which contains Las Vegas and is by far the most populous county in Nevada, by about 12 points in order to have a chance in November. Rocha, recalling the 2006 governor’s race for the R-J, reminds us that Democrat Dina Titus won Clark County by about six points, but lost the election by four points. In this latest Mason-Dixon poll, 45 percent of those surveyed in Clark County chose Sandoval and 36 percent chose Reid, while 14 percent remain undecided.
According to the latest numbers, the Rory Reid campaign has about $2 million more in their campaign coffers than Sandoval, every dime of which the campaign is going to need if it hopes to have a chance in November.