Poll responses accentuate negatives of candidates

Gov. Jim Gibbons must have been positively giddy when a Rasmussen Reports poll released March 31 showed him narrowly beating Democrat Rory Reid in a November matchup, a first for the hugely unpopular GOP governor. Though the automated calls from Rasmussen can't distinguish between a real voter and a 10-year-old punching in an answer, Gibbons touted the Rasmussen poll to ask for campaign dollars.

Could his strategy of campaigning via aggressive news releases (because he doesn't have money for advertising) be working? Maybe opposing the federal health care plan is a smart strategy.

Except the Las Vegas Review-Journal's April poll just a few days later showed something Rasmussen didn't. Two months out from the June 8 primary, Gibbons still is a long shot in the Republican primary. He's unlikely to get the chance to challenge the Clark County commissioner.

Gibbons lags 14 points behind his strongest primary challenger, former federal Judge Brian Sandoval, and has lost ground since February, when he was 7 points behind Sandoval. The newspaper's pollster, Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, said if Republicans want to keep the governor's job in GOP hands, Sandoval beats Reid handily.

"You can't win with 54 percent negatives and only 15 percent favorables," Coker said, referring to Gibbons.

Right now, Sandoval leads Gibbons 39 percent to 25 percent. In February, Sandoval had 37 percent and Gibbons 30 percent.

Sandoval has one other advantage. He has money for advertising. I've seen his warm and fuzzy introductory ad three times already.

Pollsters say watch two areas in tracking polls: Where are the independents aligning? What's happening to a candidate's unfavorable ratings?

In the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races, Nevada independents are favoring Republicans, with one exception. In the governor's race, Rory Reid pulled a few percentage points more independents (42 to 39) than Gibbons. In a Sandoval-Rory Reid match, independents favor Sandoval (50 to 33) over Reid.

The trends show Sue Lowden increasingly looks like the choice of Republicans to challenge U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as she is 18 points ahead of any other GOP rival.

Harry Reid's unfavorable ratings increased to 56 percent in April, a 5-point bump from February, courtesy of the health care bill he coaxed through the Senate. Gibbons has the second highest unfavorable rating with 54 percent, up from 51 percent in February.

Right now 24 percent of those polled don't like Lowden, a gaming executive and former state senator. Faced with a negative ad campaign from Harry Reid and union groups, rest assured her negatives will go up before November. But Coker said that could backfire. "When people already hate you and you run nasty ads, they just hate you more."

In general election polls, Lowden is now pulling 46 percent of the vote and Reid keeps 38 percent. In the breakdown, which can be found on the Review-Journal Web site at www.lvrj.com/polls, the former beauty queen is favored by a majority of men, while women are more evenly divided between Lowden and Reid, favoring him just slightly. But the independents like the beauty queen more than the majority leader (44 to 38).

Gibbons won't be using the newspaper's poll to raise dough for his primary, and neither of the Reids will be enthused. Sandoval and Lowden have the most to gain from their increasingly strong showing in polls for their primaries.

Early voting starts May 22, yet the poll showed 29 percent of Republicans haven't decided whom to vote for in the governor's race and 16 percent are undecided in the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate.

It's depressingly obvious a lot of voters aren't paying attention yet or just don't care. It doesn't take a poll to know that's not a positive as Nevada struggles to keep afloat.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 702- 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.