LAS VEGAS, Nev. Four days before Nevada’s Nov. 3 election, the state’s poll of record had the governor’s race dead even, 47 percent for Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and 47 percent for Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford, with independent candidate Danielle Ford, who is not related to Aaron Ford, at 1 percent. By early Wednesday morning, the Associated Press had projected Ford the winner, making him Nevada’s first Black governor, and the count so far has him ahead by roughly 7 percentage points, a tied race turning into a win well outside what that single poll showed.
That outcome traces to familiar ground for anyone watching the gap between Nevada’s two biggest counties and the 15 that are not. With counting still underway, Ford is running about 9 points more Democratic in Clark County than Gov. Steve Sisolak managed against the same Lombardo in 2022, and about 7.4 points more Democratic in Washoe County. Lombardo, meanwhile, carried every one of Nevada’s 15 rural counties again, several by wider margins than his own statewide score four years ago, even as the vote count coming out of those counties lags its 2022 pace more than Clark’s or Washoe’s does.
The Margins That Flipped the Mansion
Nevada’s county-level returns so far show Ford leading Clark County by 14.7 points and Washoe County by 8.8 points. Four years earlier, in certified county-by-county returns from the same race between Lombardo and Sisolak, the Democrat’s edge was far thinner in both places.
| County | 2022 margin | 2026 margin (count so far) | Shift |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clark | Sisolak +5.7 | Ford +14.7 | 9.0 points more Democratic |
| Washoe | Sisolak +1.4 | Ford +8.8 | 7.4 points more Democratic |
The shift was visible before most mail ballots were even counted. A Republican advantage of 22 points among Nevadans who voted in person on Election Day in 2022 had shrunk to under 9 points by 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 3 this year, according to live tracking from The Nevada Independent. In Clark County specifically, Democrats held a roughly 500-vote edge among that day’s in-person voters at that hour, compared with a 21,000-vote Republican edge over the same stretch four years ago.
Rural Nevada Held the Line, With Fewer Votes Behind It
Lombardo did not lose ground everywhere. He swept all 15 of the state’s rural counties for a second straight governor’s race, and in several of them his margin dwarfed his own roughly 1.5 point statewide win in 2022. He is currently ahead by 78.4 points in Eureka County, 72.2 points in Lincoln County and 55.8 points in Esmeralda County, the state’s smallest.
But the votes behind those lopsided margins fell short of 2022’s count. Nevada’s 15 rural counties cast a combined 144,674 votes in that certified race. As of Wednesday night, with Nevada’s statewide count still open, those same counties had produced 133,199 votes in the governor’s race, a shortfall of nearly 8 percent. Clark County’s count so far is about 1 percent behind its 2022 total, and Washoe’s is about 1.6 percent behind, both smaller gaps than rural Nevada’s, according to this outlet’s calculations from the same two data sets. Nevada’s count was not finished at either point of comparison, so part of every county’s gap could close as more ballots are processed.
Where Lombardo Ran Widest in 2026
- Eureka County: Lombardo +78.4 points, 770 total votes cast
- Lincoln County: Lombardo +72.2 points, 1,943 total votes cast
- Esmeralda County: Lombardo +55.8 points, 391 total votes cast
- Lander County: Lombardo +55.0 points, 1,996 total votes cast
- Pershing County: Lombardo +52.5 points, 1,689 total votes cast
A Poll That Missed, and a Count That Isn’t Finished
Noble Predictive Insights, which brands itself Nevada’s poll of record, surveyed 487 likely voters from Oct. 26 to 28 and found the race tied within a margin of error of plus or minus 4.44 percentage points. The firm’s own analysis noted that Lombardo’s support actually ran ahead of President Trump’s 42 percent approval rating in the same poll, and that roughly 1 in 5 of Lombardo’s supporters disapproved of Trump. The margin as counted so far, about 7 points for Ford, is a wider gap than that tied poll suggested, even accounting for its stated error range.
Nevada’s count is not close to final. Clark County’s election department had processed more than 378,000 mail ballots as of 11 a.m. Wednesday, with about 4,800 needing signature cures and tens of thousands more arriving Tuesday still being worked through. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day count if received by 5 p.m. Nov. 7, and voters have until 5 p.m. Nov. 9 to fix a mismatched signature. Washoe County reported 15,800 mail ballots still outstanding as of 9 a.m. Wednesday, putting that county at about 92 percent counted, plus roughly 2,300 provisional ballots under review. Nevada certified its 2022 results three weeks after Election Day, so a final, official tally of this year’s race is still some distance off.
Voters also passed both statewide ballot questions in front of them Tuesday. Question 6, which writes a right to abortion into the state constitution, passed with about 63 percent in favor, and Question 7, which requires voters to show identification at the polls, passed with about 62 percent. Both needed to pass in two consecutive elections under Nevada’s constitutional amendment process, and both also passed in 2024.
