RENO, Nevada — Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford has unseated Republican Governor Joe Lombardo in the November 3 general election, according to an Associated Press race call issued early on Wednesday, November 4. The AP count put Ford at 491,891 votes, 51.52 percent, against 423,205 votes, 44.33 percent, for Lombardo, with 1,494 of the state's 1,760 precincts reporting — 84.89 percent. Two other options trailed far behind: Danielle Ford, running with no party affiliation, had 25,900 votes, and Nevada's distinctive 'None of These Candidates' option had 13,671. The figures are unofficial until the state certifies its results.
Source: Associated Press
An earlier snapshot from the Nevada Secretary of State, updated at 2:02 a.m., told the same story in slightly smaller numbers — Ford on 490,976 votes, 51.6 percent, to Lombardo's 421,840, 44.3 percent — and the margin held as more precincts reported through the early hours of Wednesday. Nevada counts mail ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and arrive over the following days, so the final totals will keep changing before certification, even though the outcome has been called.
Source: Vegas Daily Wire / Nevada Secretary of State
A first in Nevada — and west of the Mississippi
Ford will be the first Black governor in Nevada's history, and, as NPR's reporting of the AP call put it, the first Black governor of a state west of the Mississippi River. It is the latest in a line of firsts in his own career: he was previously Nevada's first Black Senate majority leader and its first Black attorney general. Ford was first elected to the state legislature in 2012, and before entering politics he practiced law privately and taught mathematics.
Source: NPR / KUNR Public Radio
Lombardo, by contrast, was the incumbent asking voters for a second term. Elected in 2022 after serving as a sheriff, he was endorsed by President Donald Trump and campaigned on continuing the work of his first term, pointing to pay increases for teachers and state employees and $133 million set aside to develop housing for middle-income Nevadans. His defeat makes him the second consecutive Nevada governor to lose a re-election bid, after Democrat Steve Sisolak lost in 2022 — the governor's office in Carson City has now changed hands at three straight elections.
Source: Wikipedia — 2026 Nevada gubernatorial election
How the campaign was fought: prices, tourism and vetoes
Ford's campaign tied the state's economic troubles directly to Lombardo and Trump. He pointed to some of the highest petrol prices in the country, at over $5 a gallon, and to declining tourism — one of Nevada's main sources of revenue, centred on Las Vegas — which he blamed on tariffs and immigration crackdowns. He also warned that Nevada risks losing an estimated $1.2 billion in federal funding because of changes to Medicaid and food assistance and cuts to Affordable Care Act health insurance.
Source: NPR / KUNR Public Radio
His central promise was to revive legislation Lombardo had blocked. As attorney general, Ford had joined lawsuits against the Trump administration to uphold birthright citizenship, stop what the suits described as federal election interference, and restore education funding. As governor-elect, he has pledged to bring back bills that Lombardo killed in a record-breaking run of vetoes — including a measure limiting how many homes large corporations can buy, and a measure giving the state the power to adopt Medicaid-negotiated prescription drug prices. The two men also argued over data centres: both had a hand in tax breaks for them, and each claimed he would now be tougher on them.
Source: NPR / KUNR Public Radio
The road to November ran through the June 9 primaries. Ford won the Democratic nomination with 63.8 percent of the vote over Washoe County commission chair Alexis Hill, while Lombardo took the Republican nomination almost unopposed, with 91.0 percent. Cook Political Report rated the general election among the most competitive governor's races in the country, and through election night Lombardo told supporters at the Republican headquarters to be patient — but the early lead Ford opened never closed.
Source: Wikipedia — 2026 Nevada gubernatorial election
Las Vegas and Reno are home to growing South Asian and Punjabi communities, and Nevada sits on the I-15 and US-95 trucking corridors that Punjabi-Canadian and Punjabi-American drivers run between California, Utah and Arizona. A governor who campaigned on housing costs, fuel prices and immigration enforcement — and who, as attorney general, sued the federal government over birthright citizenship — will set the tone on exactly the issues those communities and drivers feel first: rents, diesel and petrol prices, and how state agencies treat immigrant workers.
What happens next
Ford takes office in January 2027; Lombardo remains governor until then. Before that, Nevada's counties must finish counting the mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that are still arriving, and the state must certify the result — the certified margin will differ from Wednesday morning's numbers, even though the AP has called the race. The first real tests of the new administration will be the bills Ford promised to revive from Lombardo's veto list, the state's budget fight over the estimated $1.2 billion in federal funding at risk, and whether the new governor's pledges on corporate home-buying and prescription drug prices can pass a legislature that spent the last term at odds with the governor's office.