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For the first time in 20 years, Nevada went red in the presidential race — but the GOP’s gains didn’t trickle all the way down the ballot.
Although Democrats failed to win a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature, only one incumbent Democrat lost a legislative race, while the state’s Democratic congressional delegation swept their contests.
There are many possible reasons — such as Democrats’ continued fundraising and ground game prowess and the nationwide trend of them overperforming Vice President Kamala Harris in local races — but another factor might have played an important role in Democrats’ down-ballot success: redistricting.
In 2021, Nevada Democrats, thanks to holding the governor’s mansion and a majority in both legislative chambers, redrew the state’s congressional and legislative boundaries in an effort to keep Southern Nevada U.S. House seats and maintain their stronghold in the Legislature for the next decade. It was a tall order given the pressure from community groups to ensure the voting power of minority groups and the need to account for population changes.
So how did it affect this year’s races?
The Nevada Independent analyzed how the breakdown of voters from the two major parties in Southern Nevada’s legislative and congressional races might have changed if the old districts were still in place. Nonpartisans were not included in the analysis because of the uncertainty surrounding how they will sway.
The analysis found that Democrats in Clark County largely benefitted from the new boundaries — particularly in Assembly districts where their winning margin was razor thin and Congressional District 3, the swingiest congressional district in the state where Democrats had prioritized shoring up their advantage.
However, the races that cost the Democrats a legislative supermajority (which would have allowed them to overturn vetoes issued by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo) were uniquely disadvantaged by the new boundaries, which were drawn in part because of a surging population in southwestern Las Vegas.
Click here to learn more about how The Indy conducted this analysis.
In total, there were four races where the net change in an electorate’s partisan composition under the old districts was higher than the winning candidate’s margin, including Congressional District 3 and Senate District 11, the only race where a Democratic incumbent lost their seat this year.
The findings underscore the benefits that Democrats have reaped from redistricting, while also revealing the process’ delicate nature that makes it difficult for Democrats to draw a supermajority-friendly map in a purple state such as Nevada. Because districts are supposed to be balanced in population, legislators had to maneuver around population changes that likely made it harder for Democrats to draw even more advantageous maps.
Importantly, redistricting is required every decade under the Nevada Constitution to account for population changes. Additionally, candidates are uniquely focused on getting as many votes within their current district boundaries, so a candidate’s success under the new boundaries may be linked to how effectively they reached out to their constituents.
Although officials from both parties acknowledged redistricting has likely worked out in Democrats’ favor, they also stressed that a variety of other factors might have played a role in the down-ballot election results, including fundraising, candidate quality and overall demographic trends in a given election year.
Jeremy Hughes, a Republican strategist in Nevada, cautioned that the tides may turn in upcoming elections because he thinks Democrats had drawn boundaries to achieve a supermajority — creating more Democratic-leaning districts, but none particularly “safe” — rather than maintaining simple majorities with fewer but safer Democratic districts.
“Republicans could take the majorities in both chambers by the end of this decade,” he said.
Redistricting occurs every decade alongside the U.S. Census Bureau’s release of demographic data. Typically, the party in control of a state’s government oversees the redistricting process, drawing boundary lines to maximize its chances of success in legislative and congressional races.
It’s also widely controversial. Districts have long been gerrymandered — often by Republicans — to dilute the voting power of minority groups, and eight states have created commissions composed of non-politicians to oversee the redistricting process. The Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning group, estimated this year that gerrymandering gave the GOP a 16-seat advantage in the U.S. House compared with if fair maps had been used, though the group’s analysis did not account for Democrats’ new advantage in Congressional District 3.
There was also controversy over Nevada’s new district boundaries — congressional districts received an F grade and state Senate districts earned a B grade from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a national group that grades the fairness of new district lines.
State Republicans universally opposed the new boundaries as being too pro-Democratic, and community groups accused legislators of insufficiently bolstering the power of non-white voters by not grouping enough of them together that they could elect their preferred candidate.
There has also been an effort to remove legislative authority over Nevada’s redistricting process in favor of an independent commission, but a ballot question to do so was ruled legally deficient earlier this year.
Sondra Cosgrove, a College of Southern Nevada professor who helped lead the ballot initiative process, said she is considering a future ballot question that would require the Legislature to follow the state’s Open Meeting Law throughout the redistricting process. The goal would be to give citizens more advance notice of meetings when major decisions are made about the maps.
Cosgrove also noted that the surge in nonpartisans — who, as of last year, make up the largest share of registered voters in the state — might make it harder for parties to draw districts to their own advantage because of the uncertainty as to how nonpartisans will sway.
“I don’t know how much of an advantage gerrymandering is going to have in five years, six years,” Cosgrove said.
Legislature
Democrats sought a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature, but they finished one seat shy in both chambers, with Republicans netting one seat in the Assembly and the parties breaking even in the Senate.
In the Assembly’s closest races, Democrats appeared to benefit from redistricting more than Republicans.
As shown in the graphic below, the electorate in six of the seven closest Southern Nevada Assembly races swung more to Democrats than Republicans. In two of those races — Assembly Districts 12 and 41 — the Democratic candidate’s winning margin exceeded how much the electorate swung to them because of redistricting.
The one close Assembly race where Democrats didn’t appear to benefit from redistricting: Assembly District 9, represented by Speaker Steve Yeager, who had a closer-than-expected contest this cycle.
Yeager did not respond to multiple interview requests.
A Nevada Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the implications of redistricting, said that although redistricting might have helped Democrats in these swing Assembly races, they thought the demographics of these districts played an even larger role.
For example, Democrats appear to have performed well in Assembly Districts 29 and 37 — widely considered to be toss-up races ahead of the election — which rank among the whitest districts in Clark County.
“The whiter and better educated [a district] is, Dems seem to have either maintained or even in some cases, picked up a little bit of ground,” the strategist said.
However, in the one seat that cost Democrats their supermajority in the lower chamber — Assembly District 35, won by Republican Rebecca Edgeworth — the electorate would have swung toward Democrats by about 1.5 points under the old maps. The margin in the race was more than 8 percentage points, so it seems unlikely the older maps would have yielded a different result.
In the state Senate, the race that cost Democrats their supermajority includes the same area as Assembly District 35 in southwestern Las Vegas.
In Senate District 11, Republican Lori Rogich unseated Sen. Dallas Harris (D-Las Vegas), a result that became more possible because of redistricting. Under the new boundaries, the 2024 electorate in the district swung more than 7 points to Republicans compared with if the old boundaries were used, while Harris lost by less than 1.5 percentage points.
Voters in Senate District 11 also narrowly supported President-elect Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, while Biden won the precincts within the current district boundaries by more than 8 percentage points in 2020, the Democratic strategist said.
Located in the southwest corner of the Las Vegas Valley, the district’s boundaries moved south, away from the bluer neighborhoods closer to the city center and incorporating the burgeoning population further south.
David Damore, a UNLV political science professor, said the population surge made the redistricting process more delicate and uncertain because legislators were less sure how the new voters would sway.
“That was the fastest growing part of the state in the last decade,” Damore said.
In Senate District 5, the electorate swung 4 percentage points toward Republicans because of redistricting. Republican Carrie Buck ultimately won by nearly 7 percent, so redistricting was likely not a deciding factor in the race.
Additionally, Senate District 15 in Washoe County flipped blue because of redistricting, but this analysis was not possible with the publicly available data in the Northern Nevada county.
Congress
The congressional results played out just as Democrats intended when they redrew the boundaries.
The top priority during the redistricting process was shoring up Rep. Susie Lee’s (D-NV) Congressional District 3 by removing the more conservative areas of Henderson and Boulder City from her constituency. However, doing so would put another Democrat at a disadvantage.
“It’s all an interdependent system,” the Democratic strategist said. “So if you pull one lever or make one change somewhere on the map, you have to make corresponding changes elsewhere.”
The victim was Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), who represents the 1st Congressional District — and she knew it.
Shortly after the new districts were finalized, Titus said she “got totally f—ed by the Legislature.”
She may have had a point. The Indy’s analysis found that the 2024 voting electorate in Congressional District 1 swung 14 percentage points toward Republicans compared with the old district, with registered Democrats only having a roughly 4 percentage point advantage over registered Republicans.
Meanwhile, the electorate in Congressional District 3 swung toward Democrats by about 5 percentage points, more than Lee’s winning margin.
Take the maps below, as examples.
The first slide shows Titus’ old district as a rectangle in the Democrat-heavy center of the Las Vegas Valley, as shown through the smattering of small blue dots, each representing one voter in the 2024 election. However, redistricting shifted the boundaries to include the more conservative Henderson and Boulder City areas in the southeastern part of the valley, adding a reddish hue to her constituency.
Meanwhile, the second slide shows how Henderson and Boulder City were removed from Lee’s district, and she was able to tap into some of the bluer areas in the western part of the valley.
Ultimately, though, Titus won easily, and Lee eked her way to a victory by about 3 percentage points, her smallest election victory to date. Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), who represents the northern Las Vegas Valley and some rural areas, also coasted to victory.
“If there’s a 5 point national swing against your party, if you can still hold all your seats, [the districts are] pretty good,” Damore said.
