LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Las Vegas residents overwhelmingly support legalizing a state lottery and will back a ballot measure to give a sales tax break to people who purchase adult and child diapers, a new poll says.
The Noble Predictive Insights Nevada Public Opinion Pulse poll found 75% of voters support legalizing a state lottery, with just 13% opposed. Another 12% were not sure or had no opinion.
The numbers were consistent across political parties: 82% of Democrats, 74% of Republicans and 71% of independents support legalization of a lottery in the state. The strongest opposition is among independents, at 16%.
The poll surveyed 829 registered voters between Feb. 27 and March 5 and has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
Nevada's constitution has banned a lottery since statehood in 1864. Despite overwhelming public support for a lottery, Nevada lawmakers have been unable to get a constitutional amendment for a lottery before voters, despite more than two dozen attempts over the years.
The 2023 Legislature passed a resolution that would start the process of amending the constitution, the furthest any lottery proposal has come thus far. If the resolution passes in the 2025 Legislature, a lottery amendment would go before voters on the 2026 general election ballot.
The poll also found widespread, bipartisan support for Question 5, a ballot measure that would eliminate the sales tax for child and adult diapers: 71% of voters support that measure, with 13% opposed and 16% not sure or with no opinion.
The 2023 Legislature put that measure on the ballot because voters must approve all changes to the state's portion of the sales tax.
Like the lottery, support was bipartisan: 79% of Democrats, 71% of Republicans and 65% of independents backed eliminating the sales tax. The highest opposition was among Republicans, at 17%.
Voting changes
The poll also found support for a measure that would implement open primaries — in which all candidates run on a single primary ballot, and all voters regardless of party can participate — as well as ranked choice voting.
In that system, voters rank candidates according to preference, and the first candidate to get to 50% wins. If no candidate reaches that threshold after the first votes are counted, the lowest-performing candidate is eliminated, and that candidate's second-choice votes are reallocated to the others until one hits 50%.
The poll found that 27% of voters supported both open primaries and ranked choice, while 19% opposed both. Another 23% supported open primaries, but not ranked choice, while 5% supported ranked choice, but not open primaries. A final 26% had no opinion or were unsure.
Question 3 passed in November 2022 by a margin of 53% to 47%. If it's approved again in November, it would go into effect in the 2026 election cycle.
The measure is opposed by both the Nevada Republican and Democratic parties. Currently in Nevada, only registered members of the two major parties are allowed to participate in partisan primary elections.
University regents
The poll found the public is nearly equally divided on Question 1, which would remove the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents from the state constitution, and allow the Legislature to regulate and audit the system.
Among all voters, 34% supported Question 1, while 31% opposed it, and 35% were not sure or had no opinion. That was roughly consistent across party lines, the poll found.
In 2020, voters narrowly rejected a similar measure by a mere 4,000 votes out of more than 1.2 million cast statewide. The Legislature immediately passed resolutions — in the 2021 session and again last year — to put the question back before voters.
Abortion
Voters also support a potential ballot question to put abortion rights into the state constitution, by a margin of 68% to 19%, with 13% undecided.
That measure enjoyed majority support among Democrats (83%) and independents (72%), but even among Republicans, a near-majority said yes (47%). Opposition was highest among members of the GOP, at 37%.
In Nevada, the right to abortion at up to 24 weeks of pregnancy was subject to a referendum in 1990; the law was upheld 63.5 to 36.5 that year. As a result, the law in the state cannot be changed without another vote of the people.
Abortion-rights supporters — in the wake of the June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling — are pushing to put those rights into the state constitution, where they would be harder to overturn.
An initial petition was rejected by a judge in Carson City in November, but a second petition was filed in December and is currently being circulated. There's also a legislative measure pending on the subject.
