Suffolk/RGJ poll: Nevadans split on Senate, governor races — not ready to impeach Trump

Latest poll results show Trump has lost a few popularity points, but not Nevadans' faith

James DeHaven
Reno Gazette-Journal
Democrat Jacky Rosen and Republican Dean Heller.

Nevadans seem to agree that now is not the time to impeach President Donald Trump.

That’s according to a Suffolk University/Reno Gazette Journal poll released Tuesday, which found nearly 60 percent of respondents did not think the U.S. House should seriously consider ousting the president. Nearly 36 percent favored impeachment, while 5 percent remained undecided.

The poll of 500 likely general election voters in Nevada is the second Suffolk/RGJ survey released in as many months. The latest poll, like the first, revealed statistical ties in the state’s marquee races for governor and U.S. Senate. Democrats in those races lead their Republican opponents by no more than a few percentage points, well within the poll’s 4.4 percent margin of error.

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“This is our second straight Nevada poll that shows a deadlock in the Senate race and a daunting challenge for the Democratic and Republican nominees,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston. “The people who will swing this election are the people least connected to party politics: third-party voters, undecideds, and those who are saying today that they will go to the polls and select ‘none of these candidates.’”

The poll was conducted Sept. 5-10 with 194 Democrats, 182 Republicans and 99 nonpartisans. Nearly two thirds of respondents were from Clark County, the state’s largest population hub, and a similar percentage self-identified as white.

Steve Sisolak and Adam Laxalt will be candidates for Nevada Governor.

Governor and Senate races

September's poll shows Democrat Steve Sisolak now holds a 2 percentage point advantage over Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt in Nevada's hard-fought governor's race. Laxalt had less than a 1 percentage point lead over Sisolak in July’s survey.

About 4 percent of those polled said they were leaning toward, or planned to vote for, independent governor candidate Ryan Bundy, son of famed rogue rancher Cliven Bundy. Libertarian candidate Jared Lord picked up another 5 percent of those polled in the governor's race.

Losing a combined 9 percent of potential Republican voters to a third party candidate could spoil Laxalt's electoral chances in a tight race, though the GOP nominee has repeatedly said he's focused on Sisolak ahead of November's election.

About 15 percent of polled voters remain undecided about candidates in the governor's race. 

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Democrat Jacky Rosen, the first-term congresswoman from Henderson, edged out Republican incumbent Dean Heller by less than a percentage point in the state’s highly scrutinized U.S. Senate race. Heller, like Laxalt, enjoyed a narrow lead over his Democratic opponent in the poll conducted a few months ago.

Rosen's bid to oust Heller, who is seen as the most vulnerable GOP senator up for re-election in November, counts as one of the nation's most contentious, closely watched Senate races. A steady stream of outside money and media attention has only ramped up the rancor, fueling a flood of TV ads attacking Rosen's limited voting record and Heller's shifting stances on health care.

About 9 percent of polled voters remain undecided about candidates in the Senate race.

Statewide races

Further down the ballot, state Sen. Majority Leader Aaron Ford, D-Las Vegas, holds a nearly 3 percentage point lead over Republican Wes Duncan, a former Assemblyman, in the attorney general's race. That race was not measured in July's poll.

Nor was the contest to decide Nevada's next lieutenant governor. September's survey shows Democrat Kate Marshall boasts a roughly 3 percentage point advantage over Republican state Senate leader Michael Roberson in that race.

Some 31 percent of those polled in the race said they hadn't yet decided who to vote for — more than the number leaning toward either top candidate. Marshall and Roberson garnered support from only 29 percent and 26 percent of respondents, respectively.

Nevadans remain firmly opposed to banning brothels and dismantling the state’s energy monopoly, according to the latest poll.

Question 3, guns and brothels

Fifty one percent of respondents said they would vote against Question 3, the statewide ballot question that would dissolve NV Energy’s monopoly on the state’s electricity market. That’s 5 percent more than the total who told pollsters they opposed the measure in July. More than 16 percent of those polled remained undecided on the divisive initiative.

Respondents softened somewhat on the question of banning prostitution in Nevada. Some 55 percent of those polled think prostitution should remain legal in state-sanctioned brothels, down 6 percent from July's tally. Lyon County voters will take up a proposed countywide brothel ban in November's election.

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About three-quarters of polled voters said they favor enforcing a long-stalled statewide expansion of gun background checks first approved by voters in 2016. A little over two-thirds of respondents supported a beefed-up vetting process in July.

A Clark County District Court judge last month ruled the initiative — which subjects most private-party gun transactions to an FBI-administered vetting process — could not be enforced as written. Weeks after it passed, the FBI said it was unwilling to carry out the additional checks and suggested the state take up the task.

Who's liked — and who's not

The deluge of nasty campaign ads may be working, because September's poll suggests the more Nevadans learn about the top contenders in the state's headline races, the less they seem to like them. 

Likely voters in this month's poll reported a greater awareness of three of four front-runners in the state's Senate and governor races. All four of those hopefuls also scored lower in terms of net favorability — the percentage of favorable voter opinions minus the percentage of unfavorable opinions — than they did in July.

None more so than Rosen, the Democratic Senate candidate. She logged a nearly 5 percent net unfavorable rating in September, down about 11 points from the nearly 7 percent favorable rating she enjoyed a few months ago. Heller's 4 percent net unfavorable rating only slightly bested Rosen.

Laxalt was the best-liked candidate in the governor's race, logging a roughly 6 percent net favorability rating. Sisolak was seen unfavorably by 35 percent of those polled. Another 34 percent liked the longtime Clark County commission chairman, while 23 percent remained undecided. 

Outgoing Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval remains Nevada's most popular politician, garnering a favorable opinion among 50 percent of those polled in September. Former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid retained his title as the poll's least popular public figure. Almost 51 percent of respondents held an unfavorable view of the Democratic ex-Senate majority leader.

Views on Trump

Nevadans' views of Trump’s job performance — 50 percent disapprove and 46 percent approve — have barely changed since July. The president's statewide favorability numbers budged by less than a percentage point over the same time period.

But a lot has happened at the White House.

Nevada poll respondents rejected the prospect of impeaching Trump after a particularly rough month for the president. August saw two of Trump's top former associates — former campaign chair Paul Manafort and former personal attorney Michael Cohen — become felons after being convicted or pleading guilty to separate tax fraud and campaign finance charges. 

An anonymous op-ed published in the New York Times the day the poll started said cabinet members frustrated by chaos in the White House held preliminary talks about removing the president by invoking a convoluted process described in the 25th Amendment.

A minority of House Democrats have pushed several doomed resolutions aimed at impeaching Trump. A multimillion-dollar impeachment campaign funded by California billionaire Tom Steyer has also succeeded in keeping the idea in the headlines in recent months.

Yet Nevadans appear more resistant to the notion than those reached in nationwide surveys, which have rarely shown more than 59 percent of respondents opposed to impeaching the president. 

Get a copy of the full poll results below: 

Dig into the weeds with the crosstabs: