Nevada · Governor
election 2026-11-03 · forecast as of 2026-10-01 · margins and probabilities are for Aaron Ford
Who is running?
Aaron Ford (Democratic), Joe Lombardo (Republican), Danielle Ford (Independent). The margin below is Aaron Ford minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.
The race, in brief
Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo, governor since 2023, is seeking a second term in Nevada. The text calls the state purple to slightly blue: Donald Trump won it in 2024, the first Republican presidential nominee to do so since 2004, while Democrats hold both legislative chambers, both U.S. Senate seats and three of four House seats. Republicans have won every gubernatorial election since 1998 except 2018. The state profile records a Hispanic share of 0.292 and a college share of 0.3.
The Democratic challenger is attorney general Aaron Ford. In the June 9, 2026 primaries Lombardo took 90.8% (172,150 votes) per the results table (91.0% in the lead), and Ford took 63.27% (118,831 votes) over Washoe County commission chair Alexis Hill per the county table (63.8% in the lead). Independent Danielle Ford, a State Board of Education member, is also running.
The Cook Political Report (September 11, 2025), Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, RealClearPolitics, Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 22, 2026) and Silver Bulletin rate the race Tossup; Inside Elections (August 28, 2025) lists it as R. The text's polling average is Lombardo 44.3%, Ford 43.1%. The latest listed poll, Emerson College (September 5–8, 2026), has Ford 44%, Lombardo 42%; Tarrance Group (R) (July 25–29) has Lombardo 50%, Ford 43%.
A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.
The facts, each beside its sentence
Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo is seeking a second term.
Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo is seeking a second term.
He is being challenged by Democratic attorney general Aaron Ford.
Joe Lombardo, incumbent governor (2023–present)
Aaron Ford, Nevada attorney general (2019–present)
Joe Lombardo, incumbent governor (2023–present)
Donald Trump won the state in 2024, becoming the first Republican presidential nominee to win the state since 2004.
With the exception of 2018, Republicans have won every gubernatorial election in the state since 1998.
Lombardo won the Republican nomination with 91.0% of the vote. Ford won the Democratic nomination with 63.8% over Washoe commission chair Alexis Hill.
Inside Elections R August 28, 2025
Average |44.3% 43.1% 12.6% |Lombardo +1.2%
Emerson College September 5–8, 2026 680 (LV)
Danielle Ford, member of the Nevada State Board of Education
At the federal level, both United States Senators and three out of four members of the United States House of Representatives from Nevada are Democrats.
Not in the source: The facts carry no forecast basis.; The text has no general-election fundraising figures for either candidate.; No numeric presidential or previous gubernatorial results are given.; facts.candidates marks Lombardo as incumbent: false, although the text names him the incumbent.; Primary shares differ between the lead and the results tables for both nominees.; The Cook rating on file dates from September 11, 2025.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as edcb80fe9129; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | D+2.6 | D+2.4 | R+3.2 |
A shift of 5.7 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.
The state in numbers
| Measure | State | Average state | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+, 2023 | 27.4% | 34.0% | -6.6 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 46.0% | 66.3% | -20.3 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 9.0% | 10.1% | -1.0 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino, 2023 | 29.2% | 12.9% | +16.3 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 8.5% | 4.4% | +4.2 pts |
| Foreign-born, 2023 | 18.9% | 9.6% | +9.3 pts |
| Median age, 2023 | 38.9 | 39.1 | -0.18 |
| Median household income, 2023 | $75,561 | $77,633 | $-2,072 |
| Median home value, 2023 | $406,100 | $314,132 | $+91,968 |
| Owner-occupied homes, 2023 | 59.3% | 67.4% | -8.0 pts |
| Unemployment (ACS), 2023 | 6.8% | 4.8% | +2.0 pts |
| Federal government workers, 2023 | 2.4% | 3.0% | -0.6 pts |
| Work from home, 2023 | 10.5% | 12.3% | -1.8 pts |
| Households on SNAP, 2023 | 12.3% | 11.1% | +1.3 pts |
| Households with Social Security income, 2023 | 31.0% | 32.1% | -1.1 pts |
| Households with public assistance income, 2023 | 3.3% | 2.6% | +0.7 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year, 2023 | 4.3% | 2.9% | +1.4 pts |
| Gini index, 2023 | 0.47 | 0.47 | +0.00 |
| Unemployment, latest month (BLS), 2026-07 | 5.1% | 4.0% | +1.1 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months, 2026-07 | -0.4 pts | -0.1 pts | -0.3 pts |
| Change since the last election (24 months), 2026-07 | -0.9 pts | -0.1 pts | -0.8 pts |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $69,805 | $70,662 | $-857 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 34.4% | 32.4% | +2.0 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 17.2% | 19.4% | -2.2 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 5.4% | 6.1% | -0.7 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 4.3% | 4.4% | -0.1 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 2.5% | 3.8% | -1.3 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.7% | 0.6% | +0.2 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.4% | 0.3% | +0.0 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.1% | 0.9% | +0.2 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.0% | 1.5% | -0.5 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.0% | 1.2% | -0.1 pts |
ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.
Who is ahead, and by how much?
Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.
How likely is each to win?
Monte Carlo error is ±0.2 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.
How wide is the range?
Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -15.2 and +4.3 points. Election day: -15.5 to +7.8. The election-day interval is 3.8 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.
What is the uncertainty made of?
Total sd 7.40 points, made of race-specific polling error 45%, drift to election day 30%, latent opinion 14%, correlated polling error 11%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.
What evidence is this built on?
12 polls, most recent 2026-09-08. 25% verified against a primary source.
What changed since the last run?
Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Aaron Ford ahead of Danielle Ford. Over 15 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -0.3 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.
Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls.
Not answered here: why it changed. Splitting a move into new polls, time and specification means re-running the earlier model against the later inputs -- two extra posterior fits -- so it is computed on a cadence (scripts/attribute_forecasts.py) rather than while you wait. This pair of runs has not been decomposed yet. The size of the move is shown; the cause is not guessed at.
How has this model done before?
Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.
Where did every number come from?
Nowcast run 6a56d5f7-5f15-49e9-9d5a-0370fb7e45cd and election-day run 016eed8a-03d0-4e76-94ab-0e39543bf00c, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.