Suffolk takes a look at the rarely polled Nevada Senate race, and they have Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican Joe Heck deadlocked 37-37. This same sample shows Hillary Clinton edging Donald Trump by a 44-42 margin. Only five pollsters have surveyed the Senate race in the last two months, and the HuffPost Pollster average gives Heck a 40-38 edge while putting Trump up 43-42.
Nevada has been a difficult state to get a handle on this cycle. Obama won it 52-46 four years ago, and it seems unlikely that Trump will be able to make up the ground in a state where Hispanics make up 28 percent of the population. Part of the difficulty here is that Silver State has for years frustrated pollsters, who’ve consistently underestimated Democrats. In 2008, polls gave Barack Obama a 51-44 lead over John McCain, quite a bit smaller than his 55-43 win. Similarly, in the 2010 Senate race, Republican Sharron Angle led Sen. Harry Reid 49-46, but Reid turned in a 50-45 win on election night.
Things weren’t so off in 2012, but both Obama and unsuccessful Senate nominee Shelley Berkley outperformed their polling averages by about 3 points. (Few firms bothered with Nevada in 2014, when Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval had an uncompetitive re-election campaign.) One possibility is that pollsters are having a tough time reaching voters whose primary language is Spanish, but that’s just speculative. Whatever the reason, it’s very possible that the numbers are once again underestimating Team Blue, and it doesn’t help that we don’t have much data to work with.
However, outside groups from both sides are pouring money into this Senate race, so they’re certainly convinced that Heck can win here. It’s also worth noting that, while Hillary Clinton and her allies have cut back their spending in Colorado and Virginia after a string of good polls, they’re still treating Nevada like it’s very much in play. Maybe they’re just being cautious, but Democrats aren’t acting like the state is off the table. As Nate Cohn points out, one possible reason Trump might be doing relatively well here is that relatively few of Mitt Romney’s supporters were white voters with a college degree, an unfriendly demographic for Trump.
Still, Heck’s best bet is to convince a significant number of Clinton supporters to back him rather than to hope Trump’s coattails will sweep him to the Senate, something Masto’s naturally trying to prevent. To that end, she’s launching a new ad on a theme she’s hit before, reproductive rights. The spot isn’t online yet, but Bloomberg reports that it features a breast cancer survivor accusing Heck of voting to defund Planned Parenthood and threatening to shut down the government over it.
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