Rosen wins re-election, fending off Brown in Nevada's tight U.S. Senate race
Submitted by admin on Thu, 11/07/2024 - 11:23am
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) has won Nevada’s U.S. Senate race, fending off a challenge from Army veteran Sam Brown in a contest closer than polls had projected to represent the Silver State for a second term.
Like several of her Senate Democratic colleagues running in tight races, Rosen was able to win re-election despite former President Donald Trump winning the state at the top of the ticket. With her win, Democrats have retained a critical swing-state seat. By flipping seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana, Republicans have now taken control of the upper chamber. Races in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two seats held by Democrats, have yet to be called.
(Click here for updated race results.)
The Nevada Independent is able to call the race for Rosen — who currently leads by more than 12,000 votes — because of the makeup of outstanding ballots. Nye County, a reliably red rural area, is yet to post about 10,000 mail ballots, which will improve Brown’s totals. But with more than 30,000 mail ballots in Washoe County and mail that arrived on Election Day evening or after Election Day still to come, the bulk of the remaining ballots are mail from Clark and Washoe counties, which Rosen has won by significant margins.
Rosen’s victory will be far narrower than many polls projected, but is a significant feat given that Trump — who currently leads in the state by close to 4 percentage points — won Nevada. The junior senator is running close to 5 percentage points ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris.
The discrepancy was most stark when looking at raw vote totals. As of Thursday morning, with more than 1.35 million votes cast in the Senate race, Rosen lagged Harris by about 3,000 votes, while Brown received nearly 60,000 fewer votes than Trump. The data suggests that while Rosen held Harris voters, a statistically significant portion of Trump voters left the rest of their ballot blank or voted for someone other than Brown in the Senate race.
In Clark County — the site of the Democratic collapse in the presidential race — Rosen leads by nearly 7 percentage points, while Harris’ advantage is just over 2 points. The third-party vote was also much larger in the Senate race. When combining votes for the two third-party candidates in each race and Nevada’s “none of the above” option, others received nearly 6 percent of the vote in the Senate race, while garnering just about 2 percent in the presidential race.
And in Washoe County, where Brown lives, evidence of ticket-splitting emerged. Rosen received more raw votes than Harris there — currently, Trump leads by about 1.5 percentage points while Rosen is winning by about 3.5 percentage points. (Both Democrats’ margins will likely increase once more Washoe mail ballots are tabulated.)
As of Thursday morning, Rosen had not yet declared victory and Brown had not conceded.
Rosen, who raised significantly more money than Brown, was able to create an advantage early by going up on television with ads in April, while Brown was still mired in a crowded primary. In total — about $120 was spent per voter in the Nevada Senate race.
A former computer programmer and synagogue president from Henderson, Rosen first entered politics in 2016 when she flipped a House seat. In 2018, she ran for U.S. Senate, defeating incumbent Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) to once again flip a critical seat.
Throughout her political career, the low-key senator, relatively moderate without being a nuisance to leadership and known for her commitment to bipartisanship, ran on a platform of protecting abortion rights, lowering costs and defining herself as a Nevada-first senator. And she often touted her Nevada roots — Rosen has spent nearly 50 years in the state to Brown’s six.
Brown, her opponent, attacked Rosen throughout the campaign as a “rubber stamp” for President Joe Biden’s agenda, pointing out how frequently she votes with the president’s stated position. But Rosen hit him early on a winning theme in the state — abortion rights.
Brown, who had previously run for the Legislature in Texas in 2014 and has been dogged by past comments he made supporting an abortion ban, repeatedly said that he would not vote for a national abortion ban. But in a state where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks and where abortion rights are supported by a significant majority of the voters — the passage of a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s Constitution reiterated that attitude this year — Rosen’s message was better-funded and evidently well-received.
U.S. Senate races in the purple state of Nevada have become increasingly expensive, and 2024 was no exception. Close to $165 million was spent on the race, per AdImpact. Democrats had the advantage, spending $94.3 million to Republicans’ $70.3 million. The discrepancy is more stark when looking at direct spending between Rosen and Brown, who can book ad time at a lower rate offered to candidates. Rosen’s campaign outspent Brown’s by more than $21 million in solo expenditures.
