Rothenberg: Don’t get excited about Nevada Tea Party

Writing in Roll Call this morning, political analyst Stuart Rothenberg warns against getting excited at this point over the Nevada Tea Party and Jon Ashjian, its presumptive candidate for U.S. Senate.

Rothenberg shakes his head at the "hype" over polls that suggest a Tea Party candidate could be a factor in the re-election chances of Sen. Harry Reid. A variety of pundits are running with what will likely turn out to be a dead end story line, he said.

A Public Opinion Strategies poll conducted in mid-February had Ashjian drawing between 9 percent and 22 percent in three-way matchups with Reid and various Republicans.

A Review-Journal poll reported over the weekend had a Tea Party candidate pulling 18 percent in a race with Reid and an unnamed Republican.

The problem, Rothenberg said, is that "early polls always exaggerate the strength of third party candidates and there is every reason to believe that this is the case with the POS poll," Rothenberg said. The column was written before the Review-Journal posted its survey but his remarks would likely apply to that one as well.

"Only somebody with little background in polling would spend a lot of time at this point looking at general election ballot tests of candidates with dramatically unequal name identification," he said.

Virtually everyone in Nevada knows Harry Reid and has an opinion about him, while the name recognition for the candidates running against him are much lower at this time.

"No matter what Ashjian draws in the hypothetical ballot tests, Reid is stuck between 37 and 39 percent in most polls," Rothenberg said. "Until that changes, Ashjian will be a nonfactor in the race, and spending time on his potential is little more than wishful thinking by Democrats and media hype by reporters."