I have written quite a bit of late about the fragmentation in the Colombian opposition to the dominant uribista candidate.  Let’s turn now to the opposition to Senator Harry Reid in Nevada.

Senator Reid, the current Senate Majority Leader, is facing a difficult reelection and he is clearly in the crosshairs of the Tea Party movement.  The current polling seems to suggest that a Republican candidate (one not yet chosen, I would note) has a very high probability of defeating Reid in November, but the question becomes, as I have noted before, whether a divided opposition may allow Reid to escape the wrath of the voters.

Of course, what we have at the moment is fragmentation in terms of which Republican will be nominated (but that will be settled via the primary) and, more importantly, fragmentation amongst various Tea Partiers, as a piece in the NYT illustrates:  Tea Party Groups Make Harry Reid Target No. 1.

The Tea Party division is, among other things, between a candidate who registered as a candidate of the “Tea Party of Nevada” (Scott Ashjian) and those who think they ought to support a Republican against Reid (and, indeed, resent that Ashjian appropriated the Tea Party label).

Polling currently indicates that Ashjian splits the opposition and gives Reid the lead:

A poll by The Las Vegas Review Journal in February, before Mr. Ashjian filed as a candidate, showed a generic Tea Party candidate winning 18 percent of the vote, leaving the unspecified Republican nominee with 32 percent and Mr. Reid with 36 percent.

Of course, it seems unlikely that those numbers will hold, especially once an actual Republican candidate is named.    It is also worth noting that the above numbers leave 14% not allocated.

Another sidebar to this story is the degree to which the fortunes of Nevada’s other Senator, Republican John Ensign, affects voter attitudes.  For example, could Ensign’s troubles fuel sentiments against the established parties in general, and hence enhancing the appeal of voting Ashjian as a protest vote?