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Welcome to the early voting blog!
Early voting doesn’t start until Oct. 19, but some mail ballots already are trickling in – you can track them here.
As I say every even-numbered year at about this time, elections are about a lot of factors – character, campaigns, money – but they are fundamentally about one thing: math.
That’s what this blog is about – the numbers. I will present a blizzard of data in the next few weeks to help give you a sense of the race for president in Nevada, hoping to provide context and extrapolation to determine how close it will be. I’ll also eventually take a look at some down-ballot races.
Sometimes enough data is in before Election Day that I can predict winners with a fair amount of confidence, as I have accurately done in recent cycles. But I am not so sure that will be possible this year, even though most of the vote will be in before Nov. 5, primarily because of the explosion of non-major-party registrations.
You can see it here:
It’s all about those voters this time because unlike in 2020, when the Democrats had an 80,000-plus registration edge over Republicans, that partisan advantage has been greatly diminished to less than 19,000. That massive change in the Dem advantage should give Donald Trump optimism that he can break a 20-year drought for the GOP.
You can see the changes in this table:
The Republicans have closed on the Democrats not because they have increased their numbers since 2020; they simply have lost fewer voters than the Dems as the number of non-majors has soared.
If both parties hold their bases, Trump would just need to win indies by a small margin to win here for the first time since George W. Bush in 2004. The real conundrum for the campaigns – and for number-crunchers such as yours truly – is to figure out what the turnout is going to be among those non-major party voters.
I will use this blog to posit various turnout scenarios among the bases and non-majors so you can see what could happen. I think polls here generally have overestimated non-major turnout. Let me show you why:
In 2020, non-majors were 26 percent of the vote. In 2016, it was 24 percent.
It would seem reasonable to project that non-major turnout will be about a quarter of the vote. How the majors divide the remaining 75 percent is very important, and I will get to that later.
But not only have too many polls taken this cycle had non-majors getting 30 percent or more of the turnout, they also do not account for so many of these nonpartisan voters being what I call zombies – that is, they were auto-registered at the DMV, which has caused most of the non-major increase, and many, I’d guess, will not vote.
How many? Impossible to say until we see some significant turnout. The only counterbalance to this is that even the ones who are not engaged will get mail ballots and may vote.
But that’s what this blog is for: to track that and see how it develops. I will set the baseline at 25 percent turnout for non-majors, but it may be significantly smaller because of the huge number in the pool – 800,000-plus voters out of about 2 million.
For what it’s worth – and I am not sure it is a lot – President Joe Biden won indies by 6 percentage points in 2020, according to exit polls.
The other wild card is this new era of mail ballots in Nevada, which started with every voter getting one in 2020 because of COVID. Election Day turnout has been relatively low for decades because Nevadans love early voting. But add mail into the mix, and Election Day was only 11 percent of the vote in 2020. But that may be an apples and oranges comparison because it was at the height of COVID and few people wanted to go stand in line with others.
Election Day turnout was 21 percent of the vote in 2022, but I prefer comparing presidential years to each other. My initial gut says it will fall somewhere in between 2020 and 2022, but I think I will err on the higher side, although the GOP appears to have gotten over its aversion to mail ballots.
I will also be keeping an eye on turnout by region. Clark County has almost 72 percent of the vote, Washoe has nearly 17 percent and the rurals about 11 percent. But in 2020, Clark turnout was 2 points under its registration and Washoe and the rurals were each plus 1. The more the rurals punch above their weight, the more trouble Kamala Harris is in.
The key for Harris, as it is for all statewide Democratic candidates, is building up a firewall in Clark County during early voting to offset rural landslide losses. The firewall in 2020 was 90,000 voters (the Dem registration edge was about 150,000 in Clark), almost exactly the margin Biden won by in the most populous county. It seems highly unlikely Harris will get anywhere near that number as the Dem lead over the GOP in Clark is now just under six figures.
Dems recently have done just well enough in Washoe, winning by small margins, to ensure statewide victory. It used to be Dems could only feel comfortable if they had a double-digit edge coming out of Clark. Those days of consistently hitting that mark may be over.
Biden won Clark by about 9 percentage points, but he also won Washoe by 4.5 points to ensure Trump did not have enough votes in the rurals to catch up. The 2020 raw vote totals:
Clark: Biden plus 91,000
Washoe: Biden plus 11,400
Rurals: Trump plus 69,400
If you want a statistic to give Trump lots of reasons for hope this time: In 2020, the Democrats had an 11.5 percent lead in Clark on Election Day. Biden won by 2.5 percentage points less than the actual Clark Dem registration edge. Right now, the Clark Dem lead is only 7 percent. If Harris only wins Clark by 7, this race will be very close. Any number less than that, and I’d guess she loses.
One other relevant stat for 2020: The Democrats had a 3 percent turnout edge in 2020 — (that is 37 percent of the turnout was Dem and 34 percent was R), which was significant because another way to look at it: The Rs actually had a 5 percent turnout advantage of their voters because they had many fewer voters. Back then, the Dem registration edge was just under 5 percent. It’s now only 1 percent. If the Republicans have a turnout advantage this time, it may be sayonara Kamala.
Adding this context at 10 AM from a Dem data geek:
GOP had a 11% turnout advantage in 2022 which produced a 2.7% share advantage — they had 28k more voters than we did in the end — which confirms what you already know that we won by a significant percentage with NPs. For context – 2018, the GOP had a 4% turnout advantage.
In 2016 and 2020, the GOP had a 5 turnout out advantage, which is more in line with what you would expect in this election. Question is going to be what does NP turnout end up being.
It’s too early to tell any of that now, of course. But as time goes on and enough votes are in, I will extrapolate in various turnout scenarios. I would guess overall turnout will be about 1.4 million (70 percent), but I suppose it could get to 1.5 million (75 percent). I will adjust as the votes come in.
Finally, a brief primer on how Nevada votes are apportioned. Nearly 90 percent of the vote, as I told you earlier, is in urban Nevada – Clark and Washoe counties. Only six of the remaining counties have five figures of registered voters. In 2020, turnout in Washoe was slightly higher than Clark, and most of the rurals have significantly higher turnout percentages. Here are the numbers:
That’s all for now. Let me know your thoughts, and I will update when I have new data or musings.
