Laxalt leads Cortez Masto in Nevada Senate race: poll

Republican candidate Adam Laxalt holds a 5-percentage point lead over Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) in the Nevada Senate race, according to a survey from Emerson College Polling, KLAS 8 News Now and The Hill released Tuesday.

The poll found Laxalt holding 50 percent support among very likely voters, compared to 45 percent for Cortez Masto. Three percent said they were undecided.

When the poll incorporates those who said they were undecided but were asked to say whom they were leading toward, Cortez Masto’s support rose slightly to 46 percent while Laxalt’s support rose to 51 percent.

When voters were asked whom they expected to prevail in the Nevada Senate race regardless of who they were supporting, the survey indicates an even tighter match-up: Fifty-one percent said they expected Laxalt to win while 49 percent said they expected the first-term senator to win.

The Nevada Senate race is considered Republicans’ best pickup opportunity in the upper chamber as recent polling has shown the two mostly polling within the margin of error. Cortez Masto, who made history in 2016 as the first Latina elected to the Senate, is trying to fighting local and national headwinds given how the issue of inflation and the economy has particularly impacted the state’s tourism- and hospitality-dominant industries.

The Emerson College Polling-KLAS 8 News Now-The Hill survey was conducted between Oct. 26-29, with 2,000 very likely voters surveyed. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.