While national indicators can paint a big picture, counter-trend anomalies can happen in individual races.  For example, this year, the Tea Party movement’s enthusiasm might harm the Republicans as much as help. The conventional wisdom in national politics is that when the other side is down, parties should nominate popular electable candidates who may not always support every party position.  A common mistake, however, is to overreach: to nominate someone very loyal to the cause in the belief that the incumbent will lose no matter what. In 2006, when the tide was bleak for the Republicans, the Democrats picked up Senate seats in Montana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Virginia with established candidates popular within the state but moderate to conservative on many issues.  Conversely, in Connecticut that year, the liberal Ned Lamont lost in the general election to the more moderate Democrat-turned-Independent Joe Lieberman after previously beating him in the party primary. In this case, the strong reaction to the status quo pushed opposition activists to nominate a firebrand in the primary, only to see that candidate get labeled an extremist in the general.  In that race, the individual candidates transcended the national narrative. To get a sense of whether that will occur in any particular race this year, we can use Recorded Future’s news analytics features to focus on a single race to understand the its candidates, their positions, and the race’s outlook. Harry Reid is the senior Senator from Nevada and the Majority Leader of the Senate, a position of significant influence and visibility.  Because of this, he is closely tied to President Obama’s agenda, and President Obama’s favorable rating in Nevada has fallen from nearly 55% last May to 37.2% today.  Senator Reid’s own favorable rating has been poor over the past year, and coupled with Nevada’s 14% unemployment rate, the Republicans have sensed vulnerability and are targeting him for defeat. Using Recorded Future, we can create a timeline view for Harry Reid in Government and Politics during 2010.  In it, we see a number of negative events in the early part of this year, as indicated by the red circles.

The January event involves the loss of Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat and the 60-vote filibuster-proof super-majority to Scott Brown (a popular electable moderate himself) and the Republicans.  Following that comes, in order, the retirement of Evan Bayh, a Democratic challenge to him in his own primary, and his decision to weaken the Financial Reform bill.

However, in early June, we see a huge spike in momentum, as well as a number of positive events.  This is because on June 8, in the Republican primary, Sharron Angle defeated Sue Lowden.

Sharron Angle came out of nowhere to defeat the established Sue Lowden.  The timeline above shows the story: up until shortly before the June election, there was almost no news on Angle.  At the start of June, though, the mentions skyrocketed.

Lowden was a former State Senator who had been endorsed by Senator Jon Kyl, former Senator Fred Thompson, and the NRA.   Angle, meanwhile, was endorsed by the Tea Party Express and the Club for Growth.  This dichotomy can be best seen in the Recorded Future Network view of the two women for 2010.

Notice the connections for Lowden above: many with the Republican Party, the Honda Motor Corporation, and “fairly prominent businesswoman”.  Now look at Angle: connections with “Conservatives” (and, significantly, not the Republican Party) and with the Tea Party movement.

Zooming in and mousing over Harry Reid’s timeline, we see that the media sources collectively agree that Angle’s win was a positive for Senator Reid.  In a general election, the two sides will try to appeal to the voters in the middle of the political spectrum, and Reid will now make an appeal that the more conservative Angle is too extreme for the state.  Among her positions, Angle believes that the Department of Education should be eliminated, that the US should pull out of the UN, that abortion should be illegal including in cases of rape and incest, and that humans have no effect on global climate change.

These stances place her at the far right of her own party.  Reid, meanwhile, despite the liberal label applied by his critics, votes as a relative moderate: his DW-Nominate score, created by a non-partisan outfit which ranks the Senate from most liberal (#1) to most conservative (#102), has him tied for 37th.  As such, he can paint himself as the sensible moderate to Angle’s out-of-touch extremist .