Incumbent Democrat Wins Nevada Senate Race
First-term Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) survives late surge by GOP challenger Sam Brown in race that wasn’t predicted to be so close.
LAS VEGAS—Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) has won a second six-year stint in the Senate, defeating Republican challenger Sam Brown. The Associated Press (AP) called the race at 12:15 a.m. ET on Nov. 9, four days after Election Day.
Rosen shores up Democrats’ minority in the upper chamber after Republicans won control of the Senate.
Brown, 40, a West Point graduate and U.S. Army infantry officer who endured third-degree burns over 30 percent of his body when he was wounded in Afghanistan in 2008, campaigned as a commonsense moderate and labeled Rosen a liberal who is out of step with Nevadans.
He pointed to Rosen’s vote for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act as a key igniter for boosting inflation and cited her compliance with the federal government’s immigration policies among progressive policies he’d undo.
Rosen entered the 2024 election cycle as one of 19 Democrats, along with four independents who caucus with them, holding seats in a Senate where Democrats held a 51–49 majority.
She was one of 18 incumbents seeking reelection, favored in states that rating services such as The Cook Political Report and FiveThirtyEight deemed safe or leaning Democratic.
“Thank you, Nevada. Serving as your nominee has been the honor of a lifetime, and though the outcome is not what we hoped, I am deeply moved by the trust, dedication, and hope you’ve shown throughout this journey,” Brown said.
“This is not a conclusion, but the beginning of a renewed fight for our values and our nation’s greatness.”
Polls tightened in the final days of the campaign, raising Republican hopes for an upset. Two of the four most recent surveys showed the race as a tie, while one had Brown leading for the first time in any poll.
Rosen’s campaign raised nearly twice as much money as Brown’s.
With the Nevada race called, Republicans currently hold a 53–46 seat majority, with the Arizona U.S. Senate seat the remaining race still not called.
The AP declared Trump the Nevada presidential race winner with 96 percent of the tally counted at the same time it issued its Senate call, more than 77 hours after polls closed 7 p.m. on Nov. 5.
Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win the state since 2004 with 724,681 votes, or 50.6 percent of the tally, in notching a 4-percentage point win over Vice President Kamala Harris.
But those coattails only went so far for Brown, who tallied about 70,000 fewer votes than Trump did with Rosen coming within 3,300 votes of Harris in winning by 1.4 percentage points, slightly more than 20,500 votes.
There were at least 30,000 “undervotes”—fewer votes—cast in the senator election than in the presidential election at the top of the ballot. Another 41,000 voters took the time to check a “None of the Above” box.
More than 80,000 votes—not including the 30,000 who skipped the election altogether—about 6 percent of the total tally, went to neither Rosen or Brown.
Trump won 16 of the state’s 17 counties, including Washoe County, where Reno is, Nevada’s second-most populous county.
Brown won 15 of 17 counties, losing to Rosen in Washoe County, where he lives, by more than 10,000 votes.
Brown also didn’t match Trump’s numbers in Democrat stronghold Clark County, where 71 percent of the state’s 3.2 million residents and 2.03 million active voters live.
He tallied 431,687 votes in Clark County, nearly 50,000 fewer than the 481,365 Trump garnered, coming within 28,000 votes of Harris in a county Democrats need to roll up big numbers to win statewide elections.
In other Senate races, Republicans picked up four seats previously held by Democrats or Democrat-caucusing Independents. Republican challenger Bernie Moreno beat incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) 50.2–46.4 percent. Incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) was unseated by Republican Dave McCormick by a margin of 0.6 percent of the vote. Montana’s incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) lost to Republican Tim Sheehy by a 7.4 percent margin.
In the West Virginia seat vacated by outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), a former Democrat, Republican Gov. Jim Justice beat Democrat Glenn Elliott 68.9–27.6 percent.
In Arizona, with 82 percent of the votes counted statewide, Democrat Ruben Gallego is leading Republican Kari Lake by a 1.1 percent margin.
Outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), a former Democrat who still caucuses with her old party, is vacating the seat. She declined to seek reelection this year.
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