By Sean Golonka and Riley Snyder
In Nevada’s high-profile races for governor and U.S. Senate, Democratic incumbents Gov. Steve Sisolak and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto hold narrow leads over their Republican challengers, according to a new AARP-commissioned poll focused on older and Hispanic voters and shared with The Nevada Independent.
In the Senate race, Cortez Masto leads Republican nominee and former Attorney General Adam Laxalt by less than 4 points (44 percent to 40 percent) — within the poll’s margin of error. In the gubernatorial race, Sisolak holds a 3-point lead over Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo (41 percent to 38 percent).
Despite those slim leads, the poll revealed shrinking margins of support from Hispanic voters for both Cortez Masto and Sisolak, who both relied heavily on the state’s Democratic-leaning Latino voting bloc during their most recent electoral wins.
Polling was conducted by Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research between Aug. 16-24 on behalf of AARP, the nation’s largest nonprofit representing Americans 50 and older. Pollsters interviewed 1,332 likely Nevada voters, including an oversample of 550 likely voters over the age of 50 and an additional oversample of 282 Hispanic voters over the age of 50. Results for the entire sample were weighted to reflect the state’s electoral demographics.
Pollsters Tony Fabrizio, who conducted polling for former President Donald Trump in 2016, and Matt Hogan with Impact Research, who has polled for Democratic presidential nominees in the past four election cycles, highlighted the significance of those oversampled groups, given the key role Hispanic voters have played in recent Nevada elections.
“We’re basically seeing, nationally, Latino voters moving away from Democrats,” Hogan said. “We saw it from 2018 to 2020, and we’ve seen it continue from 2020 to now … We’re seeing the trend here in Nevada.”
The 50-plus voting bloc oversampled in the poll is also crucial in Nevada elections, with voters in the group typically making up more than half of the state’s electors.
Fabrizio predicted that if the election were held today, Sisolak and Cortez Masto would both lose — owing to their underwater favorability, a Republican lean among undecided voters, and unfavorable national conditions including persistent inflation and President Joe Biden’s unpopularity. Hogan, on the other hand, said the “story of this poll” was that the Democratic incumbents are “overcoming that challenging … political environment” and keeping the race close.
One thing the pollsters, who work on opposite sides of the political spectrum, agreed on?
“This is going to be a barnburner all the way to the end,” Fabrizio said.
Interviews for the poll were conducted via landline, cell phone and SMS-to-web, and offered in English and Spanish. The poll has a 4.4 percent margin of error.
Hispanic voters shifting away from Democrats
During Cortez Masto’s 2016 U.S. Senate victory and Sisolak’s 2018 gubernatorial win, both candidates trounced their Republican opponents among Latino voters in Nevada, with their leads easily clearing 30 points, according to exit poll data.
But the poll results indicated both candidates could be facing severely shrunken support among the state’s Hispanic voters.
Hispanic voters preferred Cortez Masto, the nation’s first Latina senator, to Laxalt by a margin of 11 points, and Sisolak over Lombardo by 14 points. Among Hispanic voters over the age of 50, those leads dropped to 9 points each.
Both pollsters noted that Cortez Masto was viewed more favorably by Hispanic voters over the age of 50 than any other state or national figure polled, but Fabrizio said it may be not enough to overcome the overall demographic shift of that voter base away from Democrats in recent election cycles.
“I think the notion that Democrats are going to win Latinos here by 65-35 — maybe something along the lines that you saw in 2018 — it’s just not going to be the case,” he said. “Those numbers have trended away and will continue, hopefully, to trend away. And so while she’ll do a little bit better, she’s still going to have to fight for them.”
But Fabrizio and Hogan disagreed on which Democratic incumbent was performing better with Hispanic voters, with Hogan highlighting that Cortez Masto had a slightly worse favorability rating in that group than Sisolak.
Other polling on Nevada’s Latino voters this cycle has indicated stronger support for the Democratic incumbents, including a May poll from the left-leaning Future Majority, which found Cortez Masto leading Laxalt by 38 points among Hispanic likely voters in Nevada.
Inflation remains a top issue
In the tight race for governor, a plurality of voters 50 and older identified economic issues as their top concern, including 24 percent who selected “inflation and rising prices” and 11 percent who picked “jobs and the economy.” The next most commonly identified issues were immigration and border security, and election security, at 9 percent each.
In the Senate race, fewer voters over the age of 50 identified the economy as a key concern, with 22 percent picking the economy or inflation as a top issue. Thirteen percent identified “taxes, government spending and debt” as their top issue, followed by Social Security and Medicare at 12 percent.
Abortion was further down the list of priorities — only 7 percent of voters over the age of 50 said it was the most important issue in decking their vote for Senate. Pollsters also asked which issue was more important in deciding a vote for Senate candidate: inflation and rising prices, or the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Roughly two-thirds of poll respondents over the age of 50 said inflation.
Fabrizio said that because protection for abortion access is settled law in Nevada, the issue may be less salient than in other swing states considering bans or extreme restrictions on abortion. But he described the overturning of Roe as a “defibrillator for the Democrats,” helping juice enthusiasm among Democratic base voters.
Alongside those economic concerns, likely voters surveyed broadly expressed dissatisfaction with the state of the country. Only a quarter of respondents said they believe the country is headed in the “right direction,” and 40 percent approved of President Joe Biden’s performance, compared with 58 percent who disapproved.
Fabrizio highlighted those numbers as being part of a negative political environment for Democratic candidates, also noting that even the undecided voters (roughly 10 percent in both races) are Republican-leaning.
But Hogan pointed to stronger-than-average results for Sisolak and Cortez Masto, who both outperformed Democrats on the “generic ballot,” referring to a question about whom voters would support on a nameless congressional ballot between a Democratic and Republican candidate.
On the generic ballots, respondents favored the Republican candidate by 4 points (48 percent to 44 percent).
The poll also found a solid majority (58 percent) of voters over the age of 50 favored mailing every registered voter a ballot each election, with 46 percent strongly in favor. Responses to the question largely fell along partisan lines — nearly three-quarters of Republicans over the age of 50 opposed universal mail-in ballots, while 91 percent of Democrats over 50 years old and 60 percent of independents over 50 supported the policy.
Several other proposed policies included in the poll were supported by large majorities of voters over the age of 50, including allowing nurses licensed in other states to work in Nevada without obtaining a new license (63 percent supported) and creating a state retirement savings program (58 percent supported).
