New Poll Has Harry Reid Leading Sharron Angle in Nevada Senate Race

(July 16) -- According to the latest polls, embattled Nevada incumbent Democratic Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is now leading Republican challenger Sharron Angle, 44 to 37 percent. In last month's poll, Angle was ahead three percentage points.

Reid's seat has long looked vulnerable in this purple state, which has the country's highest unemployment rate -- 14 percent. The majority leader is the local face of the Obama administration, and even though Obama took Nevada in the 2008 presidential election, his popularity there has declined. For Republican's eyeing big wins in the mid-term elections, winning Reid's seat would be the greatest scalp.

Enter Angle, who rolled to a primary victory on a wave of tea party support -- only to have Reid spend the weeks since using his much bigger war chest to pummel Angle with advertising painting her as a fringe candidate. It has helped that he's got a lot of material to work with: Angle has called for shutting down the Department of Education and Internal Revenue Service, withdrawing from the United Nations and phasing out Medicare and Social Security.

Twisting the knife, the Reid campaign "relaunched an earlier version of Angle's website to reveal her position on issues like dumping nuclear waste at Yucca mountain and her position on offshore drilling," reports CBS News.

Angle, taking a page from the Sarah Palin handbook, has resisted interviews with mainstream media outlets and the typical campaign tour of shows like Meet the Press. "Well, in that audience will they let me say I need $25 dollars from a million people go to Sharron Angle.com send money?" she has said.

But now that she's trailing Reid, Angle may have to re-think her tactics. The only problem is that so far, according to the opinion surveys, the more Nevada voters learn about Angle, the less they like.