ABSTRACT
From the outside, the Nevada Senate race encapsulated many of the plotlines shaping the 2010 election narrative. First, there were the candidates: Harry Reid, an entrenched, but unpopular Democratic incumbent who not only supported the Obama administration’s major policy initiatives, but was the main force pushing the president’s agenda through Congress, and Sharron Angle, a Tea Party darling and long-time thorn in the side of the Republican establishment. Then there was the context: a swing state with the highest unemployment, foreclosure, and bankruptcy rates and the sharpest decline in median income in the nation-bad omens for any Democratic incumbent. There was also the money-lots and lots of money. The candidates spent record sums for a Nevada election; national and state party organizations made huge investments; and third-party groups made unprecedented expenditures to either help oust the Senate Majority Leader or push him over the fi nish line for another term.
