Ben has already pulled apart the Senate portion of the Post's Mason-Dixon poll this morning, and the main conclusions are obvious. Salazar is way ahead of Mike "Who?" Miles; 39% of Democrats don't even recognize Miles's name, despite extensive bus-touring throughout the state. Coors and Schaffer are locked in a tight race, but even 20% of Republicans couldn't identify Schaffer. Salazar beats everyone, but again, the differences are closely related to name recognition, with even 20% of Republicans saying they'd vote for him, clearly unlikely.

Should Schaffer win the nomination, he won't have that problem. That said, the diffculty of being heard without money is clear. Miles has virtually no cash, and virtually no chance. We are assuming that Schaffer wouldn't face that problem as starkly in the Fall. Still, part of Coors's appeal to the NRSC was that he could be largely self-funding, in a year with a large number of competitive races. So far, while Schaffer has a number of out-of-state endorsements, the only two candidates with out-of-state profiles are Salazar and Coors.