Lombardo, Ford tied in Nevada governor's race, Dem poll shows

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) and Attorney General Aaron Ford (D) are tied in the race for governor, according to a Democrat-affiliated poll released Wednesday morning.

The survey, conducted last week of 558 Nevadans, found both candidates receiving support from 44 percent of respondents, with 12 percent undecided. It also found the candidates have slightly underwater favorability ratings, while President Donald Trump's approval rating was 11 points underwater. The poll's margin of error was 4.2 percent.

The results reinforce the neck-and-neck nature of the governor's race with less than four months to go until Election Day. Some election experts consider Lombardo the most vulnerable incumbent governor running this year.

"The results are a significant warning sign for Lombardo," Chris Sloan, the political director for the Democratic Governors Association, said in a memo obtained by The Indy.

Public polling has been limited in the race, but it has shown a close contest, with Lombardo up by no more than 3 percentage points in any released survey.

The survey was conducted by Public Policy Polling, a North Carolina-based firm that has done polling for the Democratic Party for 25 years. It has conducted surveys in Nevada before, but not in the past several years.

The poll's respondents had a slight Democratic lean, with 35 percent saying they were Democrats compared with 33 percent identifying as Republicans. Nevada's latest voter registration statistics show the two major parties in a dead heat, while nonpartisans make up the highest share of voters.

The number of respondents who reported voting for Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 was the same.

Ford's campaign has centered on linking Lombardo to Trump, arguing he has not done enough to stand up to the White House's policies. The poll found 53 percent of respondents agreed, while 30 percent think Lombardo stands up to the president the right amount.

Lombardo has defended his relationship with Trump, recently saying their partnership has prevented federal immigration raids at the scale of other states.

Some of the poll's framing appeared to have a Democratic lean. For example, it asked people if they agree more with Ford's argument that, "Lombardo has not done enough to help Nevadans who are struggling with high costs and unemployment brought on by Donald Trump's agenda," or a hypothetical Lombardo argument that "global forces" are the reason for the state's economic conditions.

Forty-seven percent said they agreed more with Ford's position, while 30 percent said they backed the other one.

Although the firm did not publicize how responses differed by characteristics such as age, race and ethnicity, a memo obtained by The Indy shows starker differences based on whether the respondent was Latino.

Of all respondents, 55 percent said they believed Nevada was "on the wrong track," but that number jumped to 74 percent among Latinos, according to the memo. It also said 72 percent of undecided voters described the state as moving in the wrong direction, compared with 4 percent who said it was going the right way.

"This poll shows that Ford has a real opportunity to grow with undecided voters," Sloan said in the memo.