Welcome to the early voting blog, where I dig into the data so you don’t have to (unless you do and inevitably feel the need to correct me):
From now through the primary election — and beyond, if necessary — I will report on voting data. It is especially useful during general elections, where I can often use data to predict foregone outcomes before Election Day. In primaries, it can’t tell us as much, but it can tell us something, albeit not quite everything before the actual results come in.
Some points to remember:
— Partisan primary turnout is not a reliable predictor of general election turnout. The party that has the more competitive/intense primaries should be expected to have the higher turnout. With a U.S. Senate primary, three House primaries and a handful of key legislative primaries, the Republicans should have significantly higher turnout. I doubt this admonition will stifle breathless braggadocio by either party, but them’s the facts.
— If turnout is unusually low — and it is starting out that way in Southern Nevada (one day of data is not enough to be sure), it’s more likely weird stuff could happen. I don’t mean Jim Marchant winning the U.S. Senate primary. But keep an eye out for upsets if it stays very low.
— The advent of mail ballots has changed the calculus in Nevada elections. It will, I’d guess, continue to reduce in-person voting, whether it’s early or on Election Day. It will be interesting to see if residual Republican scare tactics about mail voting reduce GOP absentee ballots.
Having said all of that, here is some data after Day One:
— In-person turnout on Day 1 in Clark (3,538) was down from Day 1 in 2022 (5,490). Take that for what it’s worth, which is not much after just one day. But if it continues, I sense this a mail-ballot effect. If turnout is very low overall, that might be an offshoot of general disgust with elections thanks to two top-of-the-ticket candidates people are not thrilled are running for president.
— The partisan breakdown of the first-day turnout in Clark: 1,406 Ds-1,842 Rs, 290 nonpartisans. This is not that surprising, as I told you above.
— In the city of Las Vegas, where that intense nonpartisan race for mayor is occurring, and the top two go on to the general, here are the Day 1 numbers:
Turnout was 1,204. The breakdown: 610 Rs; 491 Ds; and 102 nonpartisans. (The actual registration breakdown in the city is 34 percent Democrats; 25 percent Republicans; and 41 percent nonpartisans.) Remember that Las Vegas Councilwoman Victoria Seaman has run a campaign to appeal to Republican voters. The higher the GOP turnout in the city, the better, presumably, for her.
— The mail ballot information from the secretary of state is incomplete — it does not yet include a handful of counties, including Clark, so it’s not that useful this early. But: It shows about 16,000 mail ballots returned, with the major parties accounting for 13,000 of them and evenly divided so far.
— There are now nearly 2 million active voters in Nevada — although a substantial number of them are what I call “zombie voters.” That is, they were default-registered at the DMV as nonpartisans and are likely not really “active” voters. If turnout is about 30 percent overall in the primary — it was 26 percent in 2022 and 30 percent in 2020 — that would mean at most 600,000 voters will turn out this cycle, unless mail balloting juices that total.
That’s all for now. (I don’t see Washoe data yet.) More when I get it. Please feel free to email me at [email protected] to point out mistakes, give me data I can use or simply gush about how wonderful this blog is.
