To soothe her jitters about the election, Connie Hayes plans to spend the day on a hike and commiserating with friends.
For the 67-year-old retired government employee, the stakes are incredibly high this election. She contends that nothing short of American democracy is on the line if former President Donald Trump is re-elected.
Yet, despite her fears and a presidential race that’s neck and neck, Hayes said she believes that Democrats will be able to rally enough votes to catapult Vice President Kamala Harris to victory.
Many of her friends, she noted, are Republicans who chose not to vote for Trump, holding similar concerns about democracy.
“I think there may be enough clandestine blue people voting. That’s my hope,” Hayes said.
Like Hayes, most of the other voters The Nevada Independent interviewed leading up to the election remained “cautiously optimistic” about Election Day and the country’s political climate. Most didn’t voice heightened concerns about potential political violence or widespread voter fraud — allegations of which, after the 2020 presidential election, were rejected by officials in Nevada and nationally.
A late October AP-NORC poll, however, found that about 70 percent of Americans report feeling anxious or frustrated about the 2024 presidential campaign. Democrats reported more anxiety than Republicans about the race, while only about half of nonpartisans (who constitute a plurality of Nevada voters) expressed feelings of stress, according to the poll.
Dr. Shairi Turner, chief health officer at Crisis Text Line, a text-based mental health support platform, said she has seen an uptick in election-related anxiety. Currently, the platform is receiving about 100-200 conversations per day related to political anxiety, but she expects these numbers to skyrocket, similar to how they did in 2016 and 2020.
Turner said that these conversations range from general mistrust in government to concerns about the rolling back of the rights of transgender people and climate protections. Although Crisis Text Line doesn’t keep track of political affiliation, Turner said the groups that demonstrate the most political anxiety are those older than 65, and those who identify as male, followed by transgender and nonbinary users.
Turner was hesitant to pinpoint exact reasoning behind these trends, but offered general strategies on coping with political anxiety such as setting boundaries during discussions with loved ones or recognizing that it can be difficult to shift someone’s political opinion.
“I think people become overwhelmed when they’re just letting the news bombard them, as opposed to being intentional and saying ‘right for the next half hour, I’m going to watch the news on this station, or I’m going to look for a particular article and get my information there,’” Turner said.
Kai Olvera, a 23-year-old health care worker who identifies as queer, said that they fear for their rights under another Trump administration. Last year, 17 states passed restrictions on medical care for transgender people during their legislative sessions, and Olvera is worried that transgender rights could be rolled back in Nevada if it tilts red.
“There’s this fear that I can’t exist and go out in public with the policies and with things that have been going on in the past few years,” Olvera said.
However, at a time when other Republican-led states have been passing record numbers of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, last year, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo signed two bills enhancing protections for transgender and gender nonconforming people — a move that the Human Rights Campaign applauded.
Olvera, who has family members who are undocumented, fears for loved ones’ well-being under Trump, who has promised to conduct a mass deportation campaign if elected, potentially affecting Nevada’s roughly 150,000 undocumented people.
Despite those concerns, Olvera remains slightly optimistic.
“I’m really hoping that, because we have a new influx of new voters and people who just turned 18, that they are voting blue,” Olvera said.
