President Obama traveled to a fundraiser in Las Vegas in February hoping to aid the uphill reelection campaign of Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid. It turns out, however, that the President may have actually done more harm than good, a Mason-Dixon poll released on Sunday shows.
During his speech, Obama repeatedly heaped praise on Reid, but voters were apparently unimpressed. Subsequent polling shows that only 7 percent of voters surveyed said they would now be more likely to vote for the senator, while 17 percent said they would be less likely. Seventy-five percent said the president's visit would have no effect on how they vote.
Reid spokesman Jon Summers told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that such a political bump "wasn't the intent of the visit." Summers went on to say that "Senator Reid asked the president to come to Nevada to talk about jobs and the economy."
Though Obama's participation at the fundraiser may not have been designed to benefit Reid in November, the latest polls show that he certainly could have used a boost. The senator now trails the leading two Republican candidates, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian, by more than 10 percent. With the inclusion of a Tea Party candidate, however, Reid leads the field.
The poll of 625 registered Nevada voters was conducted by telephone with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.