Harry Reid's polling numbers continue to sink, with the latest survey from the Daily Kos/Research 2000 finding that 52 percent of Nevadans view him unfavorably. He's also trailing two of his GOP contenders. What will that mean for the Senate majority leader? Eve Fairbanks wrote a piece last December arguing that despite Reid's disapproval rating, his seat may be a hard win for Republicans:
A humiliating revolt by the Paultards, a text-message stalker for a political leader--it’s no wonder the Republicans were too disorganized and demoralized to counter the now-rebuilt Nevada Democrats’ unbelievable voter-registration efforts, which turned the Republicans’ slight voter-registration edge in 2006 into a 110,000-voter advantage for Democrats by Election Day this year. In poor Jon Porter’s district alone, Democrats registered nearly 50,000 new voters. “They were organizing Nevada and registering new voters to a degree we’ve never seen in state history,” marvels Sig Rogich, the state’s GOP kingmaker. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The poor field of challengers, the Nevada GOP’s implosion, the state Democratic Party’s organization and infrastructure, and Reid’s own savvy political maneuvering--he got rid of one rival in 2005 by helping get him appointed a federal judge--led every Republican I talked to in Nevada to downplay the chances of a serious Harry Reid challenge in 2010. “It’s too early really to say, but I’m skeptical about the Republican Party’s ability to field a [good] candidate,” shrugs Rogich.
It's worth reading the entire piece, which you can find here.