A new poll from Wedgewood Polls has Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson leading Republican David Flippo 47 to 45 in Nevada's 2nd Congressional District.
Before arguing about sampling methods, start with the plain number: this is a district Donald Trump carried by 14 points in 2024. Mark Amodei won it by 19 points that same year, and by 22 points in 2022 against a real Democratic challenger.
Cook Political Report still rates it R+7 heading into this cycle. A 2-point Democratic lead here isn't a small deviation. It's a swing of somewhere between 9 and 24 points from the district's recent baseline, depending which race you use to measure it.
Is That Even Possible?
Yes, in theory. CD2 has moved before.
In 2006, an open seat, a second-term Republican president underwater in the polls, and Democrat Jill Derby came within 5 points of Republican Dean Heller.
This year has some of the same ingredients: an open seat, Amodei retiring, and a president whose numbers aren't strong in Northern Nevada. But 2006's closest-ever result was still a 5-point Republican win, not a Democratic lead.
This poll is claiming CD2 has moved further than it ever has in a contested modern race. That's not disqualifying on its own. It is a genuinely extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims need the internals to back them up.
Look At The Governor's Race First
The same survey asked about the Lombardo-Ford race. Lombardo comes in at 50 percent, leading his opponent Aaron Ford by 3 points.
Compare that to every other recent Nevada poll:
- RealClearPolitics' average has him at 40.
- Noble Predictive Insights had him at 39.
- Emerson had him tied at 41.
Wedgewood's 50 is the highest Lombardo number anywhere in the current polling.
If this survey were tilted to make Republicans look weak, the governor's race is the wrong place to look for proof. It's doing the opposite.
NEW POLL: LOMBARDO NARROWLY AHEAD IN RE-ELECTION EFFORT, WHILE DEMOCRATS MAY HAVE A CHANCE OF A SURPRISE FLIP
Governor (n=700 LV)
🔴Lombardo: 50%
🔵Ford: 47%
NV2 (n=350 LV)
🔵Teresa Benitez-Thompson: 48%
🔴David Flippo: 46%
7/9-7/12https://t.co/uBqKdz0Y9s— Wedgewood Polls (@WedgewoodPolls) July 13, 2026
Ticket Split
The governor's race was broken down by district with CD2 respondents backing Lombardo by 10 points, 54 to 44. That's a result much closer to what the district's history would predict.
But the CD2 House number, sampled from half the size of the gubernatorial race respondents, has the Republican down 2. That's a 12-point gap between how these voters say they feel about the Republican governor candidate and the Republican House candidate.
Some of that could be real. Northern Nevada's voters are seasoned ticket-splitters. Washoe County backed Kamala Harris by 1 point in 2024 while giving Jacky Rosen a 15-point win on the same ballot.
What McShane Actually Said
Flippo consultant Rory McShane didn't hold back. In a post on X, he called it a “Bullshit poll,” adding that it would “be great for Act Blue fundraising copy for sure.”
In a follow-up post, featuring a photo of President Donald Trump enjoying a taco bowl, McShane wrote:
“In addition to over sampling Democrats by 6% Thinking the Republican Governor will get 85% of the black vote against a black candidate. They almost doubled the correct sample of Latino voters.”
Okay one more:
❌ In addition to over sampling Democrats by 6%
❌ Thinking the Republican Governor will get 85% of the black vote against a black candidate.They almost doubled the correct sample of Latino voters. https://t.co/em21JiN4BP pic.twitter.com/eUL4fPZ4d3
— Rory K. McShane (@rkmcshane) July 14, 2026
Three separate claims are packed into that post, and they don't all hold up the same way.
Where He's Right
The 85 percent number is real, and it's a legitimate problem. The poll's crosstabs show Lombardo winning 85 percent of Black respondents against Ford's 11 percent. Ford is Nevada's first Black attorney general.
Nationally in 2024, Black voters backed the Democratic ticket by roughly 83 to 14. A poll showing an 85-point Republican advantage with Black voters, against a Black Democratic nominee, runs almost the exact opposite direction of every documented pattern in American voting.
McShane's instinct on this one is correct, and it's arguably the strongest single data point against this poll's credibility.
Conversely, a social media post reported this crosstab in reverse, with Ford getting 85 percent of the black vote. NN&V has reached out to the pollster to clarify.
Where He's Not
The claim that the poll “almost doubled” the correct Latino sample doesn't check out against public data.
The poll's CD2 subsample is 17 percent Hispanic. Nevada's statewide share of Hispanic registered voters is close to 1 in 5, about 20 percent, according to the NALEO Educational Fund — meaning this poll's CD2 number actually runs below the statewide figure, not above it.
District-level voter registration data is harder to pin down precisely, but Census figures put CD2's Hispanic population at 24 percent, which lines up reasonably well with a 17 percent share of registered voters once you account for the usual gap between population and registration.
On the numbers available publicly, this sample looks roughly in line with the district. Not doubled.
What This Means
McShane's pushback is one for three. The Black voter crosstab is a real, checkable problem with this poll, and readers should take it seriously.
The Latino sampling claim isn't, at least based on what's publicly available, and running it without a fact-check would have handed critics an easy way to dismiss his stronger point along with his weaker one. The oversampling-Democrats-by-6-percent claim can't be checked at all, because this poll's public release doesn't include the party-registration breakdown needed to confirm or deny it.
Even that one solid point isn't fully settled. If it turns out the 85 percent figure itself was transcribed or reported incorrectly somewhere upstream, McShane's only defensible claim goes with it, and his pushback drops to zero for three.
A Warning Worth Taking Seriously
The real need for caution isn't just about this poll's numbers. It's about what happens if conservatives use its flaws as a reason to stop paying attention to the district entirely.
This isn't coming out of nowhere. NN&V flagged the risk to this seat back in April — a Las Vegas-based, self-funded nominee running into a county that has punished exactly that profile three cycles running. Washoe split its ticket by 12,500 votes in 2024.
A Las Vegas Democrat came within eight-tenths of a point of winning inside CD2 in 2022. That groundwork was laid before this poll ever existed, and it doesn't go away because one crosstab in this survey doesn't add up.
A 2-point race in a Trump+14 district is still an extraordinary claim, and this poll's internals aren't clean enough to call it proven.
But dismissing the poll isn't the same as dismissing the trend. Sentiment moves districts, and this one has moved before. Republicans who want to hold CD2 should treat this as a real contest and campaign like it, whether or not Wedgewood ever cleans up its numbers.
Update 7/14/26 10:15 a.m.:
After publishing, Westwood polls responded to NN&V, writing:
“The black voter crosstab was a data error. The numbers should be flipped with Ford at 85% and Lombardo at 11%.”
This author subsequently posted on social media:
Rory has struck out on all points trying to discredit the poll.
And while I am not endorsing the poll, I am saying his arguments backfired and lent credibility.— BrutalBrittany💕 (@BrutalBrittany2) July 14, 2026
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Nevada News & Views. This article was written with the assistance of AI. Please verify information and consult additional sources as needed.
