It was late on a Saturday night, four days after the polls had officially closed, when the math finally finished its slow crawl across the Silver State. Catherine Cortez Masto had done it. She didn't just win a seat; she essentially saved the Democratic majority in the Senate.
The 2022 Nevada Senate race was a brutal, grinding affair that ended with a margin so thin you could barely fit a ballot through it. We're talking about a 0.8% difference. In a state of over 3 million people, fewer than 8,000 votes separated the incumbent from her challenger, Adam Laxalt. It was the closest Senate contest in the entire country that year.
Honestly, for most of that week, it looked like Laxalt had it in the bag. He was up by thousands of votes as the rural "red wall" numbers poured in. But Nevada has this unique system where mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can arrive days later. As those urban ballots from Clark and Washoe counties started trickling in, the lead evaporated. It was agonizingly slow.
Why the 2022 Nevada Senate Race Caught Everyone Off Guard
Pollsters were sweating. Most of the final surveys heading into November had Laxalt leading, sometimes by 4 or 5 points. The "Red Wave" narrative was everywhere in the media. People looked at the sky-high gas prices in Las Vegas—which were hitting $5 a gallon at the time—and figured the incumbent was toast.
👉 See also: Florida Election Results 2024 Amendment 4: What Really Happened
But Nevada is weird. It’s a "transient" state. According to data from the Cook Political Report, nearly half of the people on the voter rolls in 2022 hadn't even been registered when Cortez Masto first won in 2016. That makes polling nearly impossible. You’re trying to hit a moving target.
Cortez Masto leaned hard into two things: abortion rights and her local roots. After the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade earlier that summer, the energy on the ground shifted. Laxalt, a former Attorney General with a very conservative record, was painted as too extreme for a state that had codified abortion rights back in 1990.
The Numbers That Actually Mattered
If you want to understand how she pulled this off, you have to look at the ground game. The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 is the titan of Nevada politics. They didn't just "endorse" her. They sent 450 canvassers to knock on over 1 million doors. Think about that number for a second. In a race decided by 7,928 votes, knocking on a million doors isn't just a strategy—it's the entire game.
The demographic breakdown tells a fascinating story:
- The Latino Vote: Cortez Masto secured roughly 62% of Hispanic voters. While Republicans have been making gains with Latino men nationally, she held the line in Nevada.
- The Youth Vote: Voters under 30 went for the Democrat by a 64% margin.
- Washoe County: This was the "purple" heart of the race. While Laxalt won the rural counties by massive margins, Cortez Masto actually flipped Washoe (Reno), which proved to be the final nail in the coffin for the GOP challenge.
Money, Ads, and the "Rubber Stamp" Attack
Laxalt’s campaign was basically a relentless loop of "Biden, Biden, Biden." He called Cortez Masto a "rubber stamp" for the administration's spending. He blamed her for inflation. And for a while, it was working. Nevada’s economy is heavily tied to travel and hospitality, and when inflation hits, it hits the Strip hard.
📖 Related: The Department of Education Shutdown: What Happens to Your Student Loans and Schools
But the spending gap was astronomical. Cortez Masto raised over $54 million. Laxalt raised about $15 million. Even with outside Super PACs trying to bridge the gap, the incumbent’s ability to dominate the airwaves for a full year before the election gave her a shield that was hard to pierce.
She also played defense on crime. Laxalt tried to paint her as "soft," but she used her background as a former prosecutor and AG to fight back, eventually securing endorsements from several law enforcement groups that usually lean Republican. It was a "kinda" messy tug-of-war over who the real "top cop" was.
The Rural-Urban Divide
Nevada is essentially two different states sharing a border. You have the "Cow counties"—15 rural counties that are deep, deep red. Laxalt crushed it there. Then you have Clark (Las Vegas) and Washoe (Reno).
Laxalt actually did better in Clark County than the previous GOP candidate in 2016. He narrowed the gap. But he couldn't close it. The sheer volume of Democratic-leaning mail-in ballots from the Vegas suburbs was a mountain he couldn't climb.
What We Learned for the Future
The 2022 Nevada Senate race taught us that the "Reid Machine"—the political organization built by the late Senator Harry Reid—is still very much alive, even if it’s a bit squeaky. It also proved that Nevada is no longer a state where you can just look at the "early vote" and call the winner.
The "curing" process became a household term that week. This is where campaign volunteers call voters whose signatures didn't match on their mail ballots and help them fix it. Thousands of ballots were "cured" in the days after the election. Every single one of those conversations mattered.
If you're looking to understand the political landscape of the West, Nevada is your laboratory. It’s a place where blue-collar union workers, a growing Latino middle class, and staunchly conservative rural ranchers all collide.
Actionable Insights for Following Nevada Politics:
📖 Related: Josh Paul State Department Explained: What Really Happened Behind Closed Doors
- Watch the "None of These Candidates" option. In Nevada, you can actually vote for "None of These Candidates." In 2022, over 12,000 people chose this. In a race this tight, that "spoiler" group can change the outcome.
- Focus on Washoe, not just Clark. Everyone looks at Vegas, but Reno is the true swing area. If a Democrat wins Washoe, they almost always win the state.
- Understand the Mail-in Lag. Nevada law allows ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive within four days. Don't trust the "100% reporting" numbers on election night; they are almost always wrong.
- Check the Union Pulse. If the Culinary Union isn't happy, the Democrats are in trouble. Their ground game is the only reason the state stays blue.
The 2022 results weren't a fluke. They were the result of a very specific, very expensive, and very tired group of people knocking on doors until their shoes wore out. It remains the blueprint for how to win a "toss-up" state when the national mood is against you.