US News

Reid trails new GOP rival by 11

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is already 11 percentage points behind his Republican rival just days after Nevada voters picked her as the party’s nominee, according to a poll released yesterday.

Former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle trounces Reid, a Democrat, 50 percent to 39 percent, according to the Rasmussen Reports survey.

The stunning double-digit lead over Reid comes after Angle, a Tea Party candidate, handily beat out other Republicans by a surprisingly large, 14-point margin in the Tuesday primary.

Many pundits and Democrats said Angle’s victory was good news for Reid because she was supposedly the weakest potential candidate to face Reid in the general election.

But, according to the telephone survey conducted Wednesday night, the experts severely understated the depth of Reid’s unpopularity back home.

The poll found 46 percent of Nevadans view the majority leader “very unfavorably,” while just 26 percent view him “very favorably.”

Angle, who has been widely ridiculed in the press for right-wing stances such as wanting to quit the United Nations, seems to have caught onto Reid’s electoral nosedive.

Since winning, she scrubbed everything off her campaign Web site except for a note of thanks for her nomination win — and a plea for money.

“Let’s keep the momentum going! Your donation will help us beat Harry Reid in November,” it says.

By yesterday afternoon, she had raised more than $260,000.

GOP strategists say that her single, simple message is the smartest way she can raise the huge amount of money she will need to compete with Reid’s $9 million war chest.

Reid, meanwhile, launched another one of his ads aimed at resurrecting his terrible image back home. It shows a hardhat worker who was recently unemployed, but who found a job installing solar panels.

“These solar jobs would not be here without Harry Reid. It’s just that simple,” the worker says.

churt@nypost.com