Post-Roe Bump Lifts Cortez Masto in Tossup Nevada US Senate Race

John HaugheyAugust 27, 2022

A tossup U.S. Senate seat in Nevada, one of five where Republicans have targeted Democrat incumbents, is among the November midterm races across the country that could be influenced by voter response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June repeal of Roe v. Wade.

The ruling, which kicked abortion regulation back to the states, appears to be spurring turnout benefitting Democrats, as evidences in Kansas where voters on Aug. 2 rejected a proposed amendment from conservatives to remove support for abortion access from the state’s constitution, and in an Aug. 23 New York special congressional election where pro-abortion voters turn out in force to defeat a favored Republican candidate.

First-term Democrat U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) is also seeing a post-Roe bump in her hotly contested race with Republican former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt in one of the nation’s most-watched Senate races.

According to a statewide Aug. 14-17 Suffolk University/Reno Gazette Journal survey of 500 likely Nevada voters, Cortez Masto leads Laxalt by 7 percentage points, 45 percent to 38 percent, in current sentiment for the November race.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) waves to supporters after her victory at an election watch party in Las Vegas on Nov. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Chase Stevens)

That is a 10-point swing in Cortez Masto’s favor from an April poll that showed Laxalt, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and supported by his former U.S. Navy colleague, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, leading by 3 percentage points.

Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos, in a statement accompanying the poll, said the incumbent Democrat appears to garnering “sizable” gains in support “among women and white voters” in the wake of June’s Roe repeal.

Among the women who