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Updated, 4 PM, 10/24/24

Good afternoon, blog mates.

With great blogging comes great responsibility, but I am not responsible for what partisans will use to spin the numbers I am providing. Republicans trying to create the narrative that Trump has Nevada clinched are either overconfident or trying to create the predicate for a challenge if Harris ekes it out here. Democrats who say the numbers don’t look as bad as they look are relying on four consecutive presidential cycles of doing what it takes to win, despite an early turnout pattern that looks ominous.

But: Data is the data, context is the context, projections are projections.

So what do the numbers say and what don’t they say:

Distilled – they don’t say it’s over but they also don’t say Democrats should brush off the GOP lead that has never before existed in presidential years during early voting.

Bear with me while I give you the latest numbers and then show why 2022 might actually be a better data point now than 2020.

After 16,000 or so Washoe ballots were added this AM:

425,000 have voted, or 21 percent, and the GOP has a 16,000-voter margin in ballots, or 4 percent.

The Washoe mail dump bumped up that county’s share of the vote to 18.5 percent, almost 2 points over its registration; Clark is now down 5 points relative to its 73 percent of the registration numbers – I wouldn’t think that can last, but if it does, Harris loses and that Senate race could be very close; the rurals are still punching above their weight at 13 percent of the vote, or 3 points above registration.

Republicans have a 3 point turnout edge statewide, 4.5 in Clark accounting for most of that because the Dems have minuscule turnout advantages by percentage in Washoe and the rurals.

The exact numbers for those interested;

In a very favorable scenario for Harris, if Dems are winninging indies by 55-45 and both parties are holding 90 percent of their bases, here’s what happens:

HARRIS	202,915	47.7%
TRUMP	206,381	48.5%
REST	16,030	3.8%
TOTAL	425,327
D/R Difference	-3,466

So it’s very simple: If the turnout pattern remains this way, Harris will lose Nevada.

But what are the chances it does? Therein lies the rub.

Let me show you some data points:

--16 percent of the GOP in-person vote so far is from those who voted on Election Day in 2022. That’s because GOP leaders are encouraging folks to vote early. Only 5 percent of Dem voters were Election Day voters two years ago. The net difference is about 14,000 votes, or pretty close to the GOP firewall right now.

--Because of the indie explosion, the partisan ballot lead is less predictive. (This is not a good development for us oracles, by the way.) The Dems firmly believe they are leading among indies who have already voted, and those skew older. Voters over the age of 60 are two-thirds of the indie vote so far; voters under the age of 30 are only 9 percent. (In 2020, voters under 30 were a fifth of indie voters. It could be higher this time with AVR (automatic voter reg). Voters of color are just under a third of the indie vote so far, already reaching the percentage from 2020.

---After five days of data, the Clark early vote and mail percentages have been remarkably consistent. The Repubs have been in the high 40s or at 50 percent in in-person and the Dems at highs 20s and 30s. In mail, the Dems have been in the mid to high 40s and the Rs in the mid to high 20s. About 58 percent of the turnout in Clark is from mail and 42 percent from in-person voting. Let’s see if these trends – and they are trends after five days of data – hold in the second week.

Frankly, as I have been telling you, I don’t think the old models make sense with this unprecedented turnout pattern. I will show you (again) the 2020 results:

I am not sure what that will be this cycle with Republicans having an epiphany that early and mail ballots are good, not a cause for suspicion unless they need them to be. So the Repubs may be doing what has served the Dems so well: Banking votes early to almost guarantee victory.

GOP operative Jeremy Hughes sifted this from the data -- his numbers on voters refer to general elections voted in:

...the problem for Democrats comes up when we look at the low propensity voters. 

GOP 2 of 4 voters - 25.3% Turnout

DEM 2 of 4 voters - 20.9% Turnout

Republicans have a nearly 4.5% turnout advantage among voters who had missed two of the last four general elections.

GOP 1 of 4 voters - 23.6% Turnout

DEM 1 of 4 voters - 18.6% Turnout

Amongst the infrequent 1 of 4 voters, Republicans open up their largest turnout advantage of nearly 5%.

Then, when you look at new voters and voters who have never voted in a general election, Republicans continue to dominate.

GOP 0 of 4 voters - 17.8% Turnout

DEM 0 of 4 voters - 13.9% Turnout

Now, after all of those numbers what does this mean? 

The Republican early vote lead will continue to grow. The GOP just has more active and interested voters and is pulling people off the couch who normally don't vote. 

This also means that Republicans will undoubtedly have a turnout advantage in this election, which, given the voter registration numbers, basically guarantees that more Republicans will vote than Democrats.

Hughes probably is correct about that, but the real question if he is right is this: How many more Republicans? If it’s tens of thousands, even a big win among indies for Dems almost surely won't be enough.

I said earlier that 2022, even though a non-presidential year and with lower turnout, may be more instructive. The Dem vote came in much later and  Election Day losses were offset by mail ballots dropped at election locations. Hello, Culinary Union and Democratically aligned nonprofits.

At least that’s what the Dems are hoping will be the case. My point is that we don’t know yet if that is what’s happening or will happen. I think there are still about a million votes to be cast.

So far about 57 percent of the votes have been cast by mail and 43 percent in person. The Rs are winning because they have a 25-point lead in in-person and the Dems only have a 12 percent lead in mail. As I said, if the Dems can’t change those margins and/or that mix, they are in big, big trouble. And they have to hope for maximum GOP cannibalization of Election Day voters vs what Hughes talked about: low-propensity GOP voters turning out.

Week One of the two weeks of early voting ends tomorrow.

In 2022, the Dems had a 21,000-ballot lead after Week One. In 2020, the Dems had about a 50,000-ballot lead after one week.

Instead, they are going to be well behind. The volume of mail ballots is down, too, which is either a concern or an opportunity for the Dems. About 450,000 mail ballots were cast in Clark four years ago – only about a third of that number have been counted so far, and the total could get to half a million this year. Or not. Need to keep an eye on those numbers.

The Dems almost always do better in the second week, and they need to in 2024, not to build an insurmountable lead, as they have in the past, but to stay in the game. I don’t know of any smart Dem who thinks this is going to be anything but a slog and a 50-50 race possibly decided by a few thousand votes.

What they don’t say is this: That may be a best-case for them at this point, to be that close.

More later…

Updated, 5:30 AM, 10/24/24

Good morning, blog mates.

Mail came into the Clark file overnight, with Dems gaining 4,000 votes overall in mail Wednesday. But not nearly enough to offset GOP in-person advantage. So:

Statewide GOP lead: 17,000, or 4.2 percent

Clark firewall: Just under 7,000, or 4.5 percent

Statewide overall turnout: 409,000, or 20 percent

If turnout is 1.4 million, nearly 30 percent of the vote is in.

More later. Coffee time!

Updated, 10:15 PM, 10/23/24

Good evening again, blog mates.

SOS is reporting today's ballots, and I now feel like I am in the upside-down world. In past cycles, I would be telling you how the Dems were slowly building a firewall in Clark (tens of thousands more ballots than Republicans). They have successfully done this in every presidential election since 2008.

But the opposite is happening: Thanks to a rural tsunami, the GOP has moved out to a substantial ballot lead:

18,500 ballots, or almost 5 points

The rural firewall, the R advantage in the 15 smaller counties:

21,000 ballots,

The Clark firewall is at 5,000, or just 2.5 points in a place where Dems have a nearly 7 percent registration edge.

In Washoe, the swing urban county, Rs have a 4 point lead, just above their registration advantage.

Nearly 400,000 people have cast ballots, or just under 20 percent of registered voters. If turnout is 1.4 million out of the 2 million registered voters, that means almost 30 percent of the vote is in.

There is no good news in these numbers for Dems, who are basing their hopes on a deluge of mail ballots coming in during the final days and perhaps the day or two after the election (They can be counted for four days after Nov. 5.) and a very favorable split among indies in urban Nevada.

There are about 100,000 non-major party voters in the mix, or 12 percent of their total – that’s substantially lower than the turnout by both major parties and part of the reason I think we should discount most Nevada polls. No one knows how they will break, although Dems are optimistic because they skew young, as Andy Bloch has pointed out.

But even if Kamala Harris has a 10-point lead among indies in the current makeup of the electorate, if Trump is holding his base, he is ahead by 6,000 votes or so. Not a lot, but a lead nevertheless.

Look at the urban/rural numbers:

The Rs have actually lost a few points off their rural lead – something to watch – but it’s still large enough (37 points) to produce a huge lead (21.000 votes). I still find it humorous that the Ds have a slight turnout advantage in the rurals but are still getting crushed because of the overwhelming registration disadvantage. In the urban counties, the Rs have a turnout advantage, including 5 points in Clark and just under a point in Washoe.

Details:

Clark is turning out at about 3 points under its share of the electorate while Washoe is about 1 point below and the rurals are now 4 points above their share. That explains the GOP lead pretty succinctly. Seems unlikely that will hold as Clark ballots pour in, but we shall see.

I expect another mail dump late tonight that will help the Dems, but the Rs will still have a big lead when we wake up tomorrow.

Email if you are so inclined, donate to our nonprofit if you appreciate all of this work.

Sweet dreams, blog mates.

Updated, 6 PM, 10/23/24

Good evening, blog mates.

A friend tells me that maybe I need to simplify things a bit, especially because so many new people are interested this year and I tend to get into the deepest of weeds. So here we go – let me know what you think of fewer data-heavy charts (I will bring some back.)

Before numbers drop tonight (if I can stay awake), let me get some basics out of the way for those just joining the chat.

The Clark firewall, defined as how many more Clark County Dems have cast ballots than Republicans, is usually about 40,000 or more by now. Before today’s voting, it was only 7,000 ballots, or 3 percent. The Clark Dem registration edge is just under 7 percent, so that is a danger sign for Dems in the early going.

I will say, though, as DC elites ludicrously whisper Nevada is gone to Trump after only four days of data (!) that that is a unicorn year, and it's not worth comparing it to any other. Yes, the GOP looks good right now, but how far can Repubs extend their lead and how many Dem indies can the Dems turn out?

About 17 percent of Clark voters have turned out, 61,000 of those are not registered with either major party. I have done some modeling on these indies – there are more than 80,000 who have voted statewide – and here’s what it shows:

If Harris and Trump tie with indies statewide and hold 90 percent of their bases, Trump would win the state by 10,000 votes. Even if Harris were to win indies by 10 points right now and they both hold their base voters at 90 percent, she loses by 2,000 votes.

This is because the 15 rural counties are turning out in larger than usual numbers – except for a couple, they are all near or above 20 percent and some are upwards of 25 percent. And the Dems are losing by almost 3 to 1 in rural Nevada. Can the rurals keep this up? Will Clark mail begin to help the Ds catch up?

Washoe County, the swing county in this swing state, also has moved toward the GOP. The Repubs lead there by 5 points, or 2,200 votes.

Rural turnout is only 13 percent of the total, but Rs are beating Ds there by 16,500 votes, or nearly 40 percent. 40 percent! So the rural firewall, the difference between Rs and Ds, is more than twice the size of the Clark firewall. Can that possibly last?

It’s clear when even state GOP Chair Michael McDonald says he is voting early for the first time and the Trump campaign is urging Republicans to vote early that they realize the error of their 2020 ways. This almost surely means their Election Day edge will not be what it has been.

One note about slow counts before I share a special treat: Washoe County has a backlog of thousands of mail ballots, as TV reporter/podcaster Ben Margiott reported, and there have been conflicting explanations. Not confidence-inspiring.

Meanwhile, Clark County’s early vote file is all messed up (thank goodness the SOS is getting the breakdowns for the data geeks) , labeling every voter as a nonpartisan and officials claiming it has always been thus. (Narrator: It has not always been thus.) Confidence-inspiring.

I’ll plug in numbers later if they come in and I have the energy, but a fellow data maven has managed to extract legislative data, so let me treat you how it’s going in a few key races:

State Sen. Carrie Buck: Rs have a slight raw ballot lead (200 out of 20,000 cast) in a district Dems want to flip and where reg is very close

In the Assembly, perhaps the Rs’ No. 1 target, Shea Backus, is down by 400 votes and turnout is already almost 30 percent.

Dems talked a big game about beating Assemblywoman Heidi Kasama, but she is ahead by 400 votes, or 3 percent so far.

Assemblywoman Elaine Marzola, another prime GOP target, is up by 200 votes, or 2 percent.

Another GOP target, Serena LaRue Hatch, is up by 250 votes, or 3 percent.

Dems have leads in most of the critical races as they try to hold onto a supermajority in the lower house, but they are generally close. Right, governor?

More later…

Updated, 5:45 AM, 10/23/24

Good morning, blog mates.

Another late-night mail ballot drop helped the Dems by a few thousand votes, so:

Statewide: R+12,000, or 3.5 percent

Clark firewall: 7,000

Rural firewall: 16,500

333,000 people have voted, or 16.6 percent. If turnout reaches 1.4 million, that means just under a quarter of the vote is in.

The mail pushed Clark County's share of the vote to just under 73 percent, or right at registration. Washoe is 14 percent, or almost 3 points below reg and the rurals are at 13.3 percent, or 3 points above reg.

Republicans have a 2.5 percent turnout edge.

Here's what happens if you plug the updated numbers into the extrapolator (remember first set of numbers is Dem breakdown, then R and then others):

So Harris needs to be winning indies by double digits to be winning if she and Trump hold their bases. Repubs usually win Election Day, so you would still rather be them right now, but the question remains by the end of early voting if Election Day looks very different this year because so many Repubs, especially in rural Nevada, are voting early.

More later. There is not enough coffee in all the world. Email me, donate.

Updated, 10 PM, 10/22/24

Good evening, blog mates.

Headline: Rurals matter.

Especially when they are turning out 3.5 points above their registration and producing landslide ballot wins (58-20) over the Ds. Consider that Other 22 percent will mostly go to Trump, too, and maybe we should be talking about the GOP firewall in the rurals this cycle. It’s up to 16,500 out of only 44,000 ballots cast -- and that's without allocating the indies.

R statewide lead: Almost 14,000

Clark D firewall: 5,000

Washoe D advantage: -2,200

Total voters: 320,000, or 16 percent of registered voters. Could be approaching a quarter of entire vote, depending on turnout.

Dems are only winning the urban Nevada ballot race by 1 percent – 38-37.

Repubs have a nearly 3 percent turnout advantage statewide. It’s 3.5 percent in Clark, less than a point in Washoe and Dems actually are turning out slightly more than Repubs in rural Nevada in percentage, but the reg is so overwhelming that it doesn’t help them.

The details:

Clark is about 72 percent of the turnout, a point under reg; Washoe is about 15 percent, or nearly 2 points under reg; and you know where the other 3 points go.

Latest mail vs. in-person:

Dems up 12 points in mail, which is 56 percent of turnout (holding steady). Repubs lead by 25 points in in-person voting, which is 44 percent of the total vote.

Here are the latest extrapolations under various electorate mixtures (if you forgot, the first breakdown is Dem voters, second one is GOP split and the third is others):

So right now, if Harris won indies by 6 and they both held their bases, she would lose by 7,000 votes.

The rural firewall. It’s a thing.

More tomorrow, send any questions, criticism, praise, typos to [email protected] and if you appreciate my work here, please donate to our nonprofit. We like recurring donations the best.

Updated, 4 PM, 10/22/24

Good afternoon, blog mates.

Here’s your stat for the day: In the 15 rural counties, in-person voting, which is about 37 percent of the rural vote, the Rs lead the Ds by 73 percent to 11 percent. I kid you not.

In rural mail ballots, the Rs lead the Ds by a wide margin, 46-28, but those in-person numbers are startling. They account for about 8,000 of the Rs nearly 12,000-votes lead in the rurals, which are punching above their weight with 13 percent of the vote (nearly 3 points above their percentage of reg voters).

The R lead in rural Nevada is more than double the D lead in urban Nevada:

So here’s what we know:

---After three days out of 14 days of early data, the Rs are happy. Some think this shows it is over, but that’s silly this early. But if this becomes a trend and not an anomaly, it will be over. The Clark firewall is only 6,500, about a seventh of what it was in 2020. I have been saying 2020 may be an orange, but I bet this apple tastes very sweet to Republicans right now.

---Here’s what it looks like if you plug the current data into my extrapolations:

So what does this mean? It means Kamala Harris has to win indies by close to double digits if this turnout scenario holds. That is, unless she holds her base several points better than Trump holds his, which is possible but not necessarily likely. This is how the Dems still, think they hold on: They believe a lot of the indies, especially in Clark, are their indies.

----Depending on what turnout is – and I think it will be at least 1.3 million and possibly as high as 1.5 million – about a fifth of the vote is in. A day or two more than we will be closer to a third, perhaps, and we can draw more conclusions about trends. But a quarter of a million votes ain’t nothing, and the numbers look pretty GOP so far, and that never happens in a presidential year.

----The Rs have a 1.5 percent turnout advantage right now at a time when the Ds usually have one. It's 2.5 points in Clark. If that gets larger, big trouble for Dems.

----The mail/in-person split is interesting. There’s a chart for that, too (note this is a few thousand behind on SOS site, but the numbers won’t have changed much:

Mail is 57 percent of the overall total. In 2020, when all was said and done, mail was 53 percent of the total vis a vis in-person. It’s clear there are more Republicans voting early and by mail, which raises the possibility that Election Day may not be as robust for the GOP. In 2020 on Election Day, the Republicans had 16,000 more ballots cast than the Dems out of 156,000 cast. I’ll keep an eye out for signs of cannibalization of votes on both sides.

Right now, Repubs are winning in-person by 24 points (52-28) and Dems are winning mail by 12 points (42-30). It’s only because of the volume of mail that Dems are within 2 points statewide – and that mail avalanche is what they hope keeps them close. They know how to get their people to vote, if past is prologue.

BUT: Let’s say 1 million people vote before Election Day and those percentages stay the same. If 570,000 vote by mail and 430,000 by early vote, it looks like this:

R—395,000

D – 360,000

O – 245,000

Those would be the ballots before Election Day if the percentages are static between mail and in-person (they are likely to move a bit but this is a good baseline for now to show what could happen).

You see how pivotal indies will be to this election.

More later when I have it.

Remember that none of this is free, so:

As always, please let me know if you see any errors or just want to praise me, and if you appreciate all the work being done here, just throw a small, recurring monthly donation to The Indy.

Updated, 6:10 AM, 10/22/24

Good morning, blog mates.

Some Clark mail added to the file overnight cut into GOP lead. Clark firewall at 6,500, GOP statewide lead is just under 6,000 for GOP or about 2 points.

Here is the latest:

More later...

Updated, 10 PM, 10/21/24

Good evening, blog mates.

The headline: Republicans lead statewide in Nevada after three days of early voting and mail ballot counting. This has not happened in a presidential year in The Reid Machine Era, which encompasses the races since 2008. This could signal serious danger for the Dems and for Kamala Harris here.

It's pretty easy to explain: The Clark firewall has all but collapsed (it's 4,500 votes) and the rurals are way overperforming their share of the electorate with what has been tabulated, nearly by 4 points -- almost all taken from Clark's share. The large mail ballot lead enjoyed by Dems has been erased and more by the GOP lead in in-person early voting.

The Rs lead by about 8,000 votes statewide, or 3 percent. Here are two charts that show what is happening:

The Rs have a nearly 2-point turnout advantage, and nearly 250,000 votes have been cast. That's probably not too far from a fifth of the total vote.

It's too soon to call it a trend, but this was a huge day for Republicans in Nevada (they are ahead in Washoe now, too, erasing a deficit). A few more days like this, though, and the Democratic bedwetting will reach epic proportions.

Far from over, too early to call, lots of mail still to come, but if Dems don't build that Clark firewall...

More tomorrow. Sweet dreams (at least for Republicans).

Updated, 4 PM, 10/21/24

Greetings, blog mates.

I have looked at the data for the first weekend and I have some analysis for you: Nobody knows nuthin’.

I kid. Mostly.

Here’s the first of a few charts I will post today, and I will post some thoughts below it:

So 188,000 votes is not nuthin’. If turnout gets to 1.4 million voters, that means 13 percent of voters already have turned out. It’s almost 2-to-1 mail ballots over in-person early votes, and Democrats have a 12-point lead with mail and Republicans have a 20-point lead in in-person early votes.

The Democrats have a slight turnout advantage so far -- ,2 percent – and remember the Republicans are likely to win Election Day and turn that in their favor. I want to stress that making comparisons to 2020 may not be very useful because of how COVID skewed behavior. And the GOP emphasized in-person and early voting a lot last cycle while decrying mail ballots – but they have seen the light. Or some light.

In case you have forgotten, turnout on Election Day 2020 was only 11 percent, and Republicans won by 11 points, or nearly 16,000 votes. That’s why the Dems building up a big statewide lead has been so important and helped them win presidential races for four straight cycles. Will the pattern hold this cycle? Will Election Day be a GOP landslide? Too early to tell.

(One interesting stat above: Dems are even beating the GOP in turnout percentage in rural Nevada, but the huge Republican registration edge means they are only losing by a lesser landslide.)

The all-important Clark County firewall is under 9,000 votes, about a fourth of what it was in 2020 at this time. (Apples to oranges warning, but that is a big change.) This is what I wrote at this time in 2020:

This year, after two days, 137,000 have cast mail and in-person ballots in Clark, and the lead is nearly double 2016 in raw numbers, although the percentages are not as different: 53 percent to 26 percent.

In 2024, after two days, the Clark total is not much different from 2020: 136,000 votes cast. But the percentages are much, much different: 40-34. Keep an eye on this.

Nonpartisans, the key to everything this year, only make up a quarter of the electorate so far. Let me show you what that means so far under various turnout scenarios. The various scenarios range from Harris and Trump getting 90 percent of their base and indies splitting evenly to slippage in bases and small leads among indies. The first number in each breakdown is Dem percentage and the second one is the GOP percentage. It should be self-explanatory.

You can see how close it is because the registration advantage for Ds has shrunk. Just a little base slippage or a small loss with indies could cost one or the other the race.

And if you figure what happens if the Rs do eventually get a turnout advantage (reminder that 4-5 points has been the norm in recent presidential cycles), you can see why the closing registration gap makes Republicans optimistic and Democrats skittish.

The best hope for Trump is that this turnout pattern holds and Election Day puts him over the top. The best hope for Harris is the indies break her way in Clark, and the Dem machine turns them out. (Joe Biden won indies statewide by 6 points in 2020, according to exit polls.)

The Dems are winning Clark by 6.5 points now; they lead by 6.8 points in registration. See why they need indies?

One thing to watch is if the Washoe numbers stay consistent. Dems have run well there the past few cycles, and while the GOP has a 2.5 percent registration edge, the Dems are up by 2 points and have a slight (1.6 percent) turnout advantage. Can that hold?

Another number to keep in mind is that while the Rs are up by 30 points in ballots in the rurals, probably two-thirds of indies there will go with Trump. So the actual vote lead may be much larger.

Bottom line: Somebody knows somethin’! What do I know? It looks very tight now, but the Dems need to increase that firewall to offset likely GOP gains on Election Day.

As I like to say after only two days: Definitely. Maybe.

As always, please let me know if you see any errors or just want to praise me, and if you appreciate all the work being done here, just throw a small, recurring monthly donation to The Indy.

Updated, 8:30 AM, 10/21/24

Quick update on busy morning:

Clark in-person early vote is in: Repubs won by 2,200 out of more than 17,000 cast, or by 12 points. So after the first weekend:

Statewide: D+3,000

Clark firewall: D+8,600

As the first week rolls on, keep an eye on this chart because, as have told you, the larger share the rurals have, the better for Trump, and the larger share Clark has, the better for Harris. It's all about at reg now:

I'll have context soon, but suffice it to say, this is below what D numbers were at the same time in 2020, although not sure that comparison is apt. All about the indies in Clark, folks. Which way will they go?

More later, I have a newsletter to put out, Indy meetings to have.

Have I reminded you lately to donate?

Updated, 6:30 AM, 10/21/24

Adding statewide results (w/o early vote from Clark yesterday), which is about 8 percent of registered voters casting ballots:

Updated, 6:05 AM, 10/21/24

Good morning, blog mates.

Clark mail dropped overnight. Dems won by 18 points; they had won by 19 in the first batch. Much smaller sample this time.

I don't have in-person early vote breakdown in Clark from Sunday, but there were 17,500 who turned out. The Clark firewall is at just under 11,000 without those numbers, so assume it's a few thousand less than that -- maybe 8,000 or 9,000 because GOP surely won in-person Sunday.

The chart for Clark:

More later, need coffee...

Updated, 8:45 PM, 10/20/24 (9:15 PM update to update with fresher Washoe numbers)

Good evening, blog mates.

No Clark numbers from today, rurals are closed, Washoe has posted its early voting numbers for today:

D-1,347 (31%)

R-2,049 (48 %)

O-909 (21%)

Total--4,295

Combined Washoe early and mail so far:

D --12,165 (39.5%)

R--11,489 (37.3 %)

O--7,053 (23.5%)

Total--30,800

Dems have a 676-vote lead in Washoe (2.2%), which has about a 2% GOP reg edge.

About 9% of registered voters have cast ballots in Washoe. If turnout is 80%, that means about 11 percent of the Washoe vote is in.

As for Clark, they had problems with their early voting file, which misled some and caused others to project inaccurately. Confidence-inspiring, too, but, I hope, just a glitch. SOS numbers I used earlier were theoretically accurate.

There have been multiple analysts who say the GOP mix of mail has more low-propensity voters, most of them conservative Republicans excited about the mix. But I take good data from either side, and it should not be discounted, even if the hype is.

I want to remind everyone that we are in uncharted territory here because while 2020 is the best comparison, it is not necessarily a completely apt one because of COVID and the first cycle with mostly mail ballots. Turnout patterns could be different, for instance. Election Day could be different.

We need more data to start drawing conclusions if we are seeing anomalies or trends. I have been told people are freaking out on Twitter in response to my posts, as they always do, but I blissfully do not see them. If a tweet falls in the forest and the person tweeted at is not looking, does it make a sound?

So:

Waiting for Clark.

More when I get it and -- you know the drill:

Please let me know if you see any errors or just want to praise me, and if you appreciate all the work being done here, just throw a small, recurring monthly donation to The Indy.

Updated, 9:30 AM, 10/20/24

Good morning, fellow data obsessives.

The Clark mail has posted: Dems won under 2-to-1, about 30,000-18,000. (I’ll round in the narrative part up here to make it easier to read, details in chart below.)

Dems have about an 1,800-voter lead statewide (this will change slightly with signature cures, but not by a lot). That is a huge difference from 2020, when the Dem lead statewide was 40,000 after one day.

If, as expected, there is a 5-point or so R turnout edge after Election Day, that means Dems (Kamala Harris) will have to win indies by somewhere around 5 points to win the state, all other things being equal. And they may not be: If each side does not hold 90 percent or so of the base votes – more Rs go for Harris than Ds go for Trump or vice-versa – the entire calculus changes. (Regular reminder: Biden won indies here by 6 in 2020, according to exit polls. But that was then; this is now.)

A few data points:

---The Dems have a 1.3 percent lead statewide. That’s slightly more than their reg edge. They have a 7.3 percent lead in Clark, again just a tick over their reg edge. In Washoe, Dems have a 5 point lead in a place where the Rs actually have a 2 percent lead in reg. The rurals are a landslide for the Rs.

---The Clark firewall, the bulwark the Dems try to erect to stave off losses in the rurals, is a little more than 7,000 votes. After one day in 2020, that number: 32,000 votes. Danger, Will Robinson! The difference in the Clark lead for the Dems in reg in 2020 – 150,000-plus – vs. 2024 – under 100,000 – is part of the reason for this. Reason for Rs to be bullish.

---Turnout so far is about 7 percent. Dem and R turnout are about the same – 9 percent. Others are about half that. The Rs will need to show their turnout advantage – remember Election Day usually substantially favors the Rs, but the question is whether they are cannibalizing their Election Day vote during the early period.

--Here’s a chart to watch:

Here’s why this could be important: Clark is turning out about 5 points under registration, Washoe is about a point above and the rurals are about 4 points above. If the rurals, where the Rs will have landslide wins, can keep that up, that is big trouble for Harris. Still early, of course, but worth watching.

Here's the megadata chart:

Please let me know if you see any errors or just want to praise me, and if you appreciate all the work being done here, just throw a small, recurring monthly donation to The Indy.

More later, maybe…

Updated, midnight, 10/19/24

It's late, blog mates, and it's been a long day, so I am going to do a quick post now with all the data. I will try to post a detailed chart every day with all of the information about votes cast, percentage of the electorate that has voted and is left and the partisan splits. It is a dense chart, and feel free to ignore it. I will post it at the end of every blog, and give you the highlights above it. To wit:

--We have no Clark mail yet, which almost surely will give the Democrats a big advantage in the biggest county. But for now, with every other county reporting., the Rs are ahead by 11,000 votes and 14 percentage points, 46-32. The Republicans won mail balloting by just a little (all those rurals offset a Democratic landslide in Washoe in mail) but by almost 2-to-1 in in-person voting, which was expected to happen (this was the pattern last cycle). When the Clark mail comes in, if it is not substantially to the Dems' advantage, that may be a warning beacon for them.

--Some of the rurals have pretty high early turnout when you combine mail and in-person. Nine of them are in double digits and a handful are approaching a fifth of their registered voters already. They may be cannibalizing in-person and Election Day voting, but it's too early to tell.

--So far non-major-party voter turnout is at 22 percent. The smaller that number is -- some thought it could get close to 30 percent -- the more the base votes for each party will matter.

--That's all for now because it's so late, but I will post the chart below. Let me know if you see anything that I missed and beware data entry errors at this late hour. Until I blog again...

Updated, 1 PM, 10/19/24

Some things to remember today:

I don't think 2020 is a direct correlation, but it's better than 2022, an off-year with much lower turnout. Democrats loved mail ballots in 2020 (and 2022), and they had big early leads. Early voting was a bit different.

Let me show you what I wrote about the first day of early voting in 2020:

Clark saw about 27,000 turn out on the first day and the Dems won by nearly 2,000 votes (44-37).

Back then, the Dem lead in Clark was almost 12 percent; it's now a little more than half of that (6.9 percent).

By this time in 2020, the Dems already had a huge mail ballot lead, which does not exist this time because Clark has yet to post. So no comparison.

As for 2022, which is an orange because turnout was so much lower, a little more than 11,000 turned out on the first day and because mail ballots had become ingrained, the Rs won 45-37.

Since I don't know the mail ballot totals yet, it's difficult to know what to make of today's results. But if the Dems already have a huge lead, the Rs could win early voting in Clark again. Volume also could be important.

More when I have it.

Broken record: Email me about anything at [email protected]. And if you appreciate the work I am doing here, please donate to our 501c3 nonprofit.

Updated, 7:45 AM, 10/19/24

Greetings, blog mates.

Early voting starts today in Nevada, and Clark may actually post its mail ballots (fingers crossed)!

The latest numbers:

Still less than 1 percent turnout statewide (that’s because almost nothing reported from Clark), and the GOP lead is expected in red rural Nevada. As I have said, the percentage of the vote from the rurals will be important – higher it is, better for Donald Trump. By the way, the rurals do seem to be using mail ballots more – time will tell – but eight of the 17 already are in double-digit turnout percentages. Also small numbers (.2 percent) from Washoe (Reno), and Dems have a small lead.

So about today:

Usually, Clark posts its voting file in the early evening. There is a new registrar, so we will see if that continues. A Clark official has told me they will also start putting mail ballots into the tally this weekend – there should be a lot returned already. No, dear readers, I don’t know what “a lot” means. But I will later.

One caveat: I will put the numbers in as much context as I can with every post, but judging anything from one day or maybe even one week will be difficult because 1. So many new indie registrants 2. 2020, because of COVID, maybe an orange to 2024's apple.

Also, the Dems always try to juice the first-day numbers and today will ne different, with Barack Obama here to rally the faithful. But I still won't read too much into the first-day numbers either way.

I plan to update the blog every evening, but no guarantees. Follow me on Twitter, too (@ralstonreports), but I rarely look at mentions, so DM me or email me.

Until later…

Updated, 8:30 PM, 10/17/24

Good evening, blog mates.

Latest numbers:

No real Clark numbers, very small Washoe sample (236-186, Dems), rurals are overwhelmingly GOP. Seven of the 15 counties already in double-digits, but this is just a fraction of the Nevada electorate.

Waiting for Clark.

Waiting for Clark.

Waiting for Clark.

More when I have it.

Updated, 8:15 PM, 10/16/24

Latest numbers are in:

Almost all rural numbers, mostly from Elko and Nye, two of the larger rural counties and both deeply red. Both are at about double-digit turnout already, three days before early voting starts.

In Washoe, Dems still lead, but very small number of votes: 181-132.

More tomorrow, maybe...

Updated, 7 PM, 10/16/24

Greetings, blog mates.

While we wait for another trickle of rural mail votes to come in, and Clark County won't give us any morsels until the weekend, I decided to start modeling turnout scenarios, with certain historical assumptions guiding me but with the caveat that the models may have to be adjusted when a significant number of votes are in.

Republican operative Jeremy Hughes beat me to the punch with his own analysis this week, which read:

Between the two major parties, Republicans will almost assuredly have more individuals vote in this election than Democrats. This will be the first time that’s happened in a Presidential year since 2004. 

Republicans have always had a higher percentage of their voters turnout over Democrats; the problem has been that the registration gap has been just too large to overcome. Which means the Democrats will having a lower turnout percentage still have more individuals vote.

In 2016 and 2020, the GOP statewide turnout advantage was 4.4% and 4.5%, respectively. As you can see, the advantage is relatively stable. 

The Democrats held a 47k turnout advantage in 2016 and won by 27k. 

Democrats held a 39k turnout advantage in 2020 and won by 33k. 

This election, Republicans will have at least 12k voter turnout advantage.  

While we all know nonpartisans will decide the race, if you’re in the Kamala campaign, you need to win nonpartisans by probably 3% to win the race. Interestingly, that is the exact percentage that Governor Lombardo and Senator Cortez Masto won Independents by in 2022. 

So is he right? Let’s take a look.

First, some more granular detail Hughes did not write about. In 2020, just under 77 percent of Democrats turned out, just over 81 percent of Republicans turned out and about 65 percent of nonpartisans/third-party voters turned out.

That translated into Dems making up 37 percent of the electorate, Republicans 34 percent and others at 26 percent. That’s because the Dems had just under a 5 percent statewide registration edge, or 86,000 voters, which offset the turnout disadvantage and they had, as Hughes notes, more voters turn out. That 3 percent share edge was close to what Joe Biden’s victory was in 2020 here.

That D voter advantage is, as Hughes, points out, unlikely to occur this cycle as the statewide edge is now down to under 20,000 voters, or less than 1 percent.

Kamala Harris can still win the state if Democrats win non-major-party voters, but the question is: How many will there be? There are more than 800,000 of them registered, and if 65 percent turned out, that would be about half a million voters. I see that as very unlikely, although not impossible, because the percentage is likely to be much lower as so many of those voters are zombie voters, who have no idea they were registered automatically at the DMV and/or have no interest in the election.

They may be a greater percentage of the electorate than in 2020, but surely not more than 30 percent. I would guess that half or a little more than half of those non-major-party voters will go to the polls.

So consider some possible scenarios -- the first number is the percentage of D turnout, the second is R turnout and the third is others:

Republicans, if past trends in turnout edge hold, will have anywhere from an 8,000 to 14,000 voter advantage. That means, as Hughes says, that Harris will have to win indies, assuming both bases hold.

But can she win them by 3 percent? Well, Biden won nonmajors by 6 percentage points in 2020, according to exit polling. Dems did a better job of finding theirs than the GOP did of turning out theirs.

But look at what happened two years ago – an off-year in which the GOP turnout advantage was –wait for it – 11 percent! And despite that disparity – the Dems had about a 3 percent registration edge two years ago – Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto eked out a victory and Gov. Steve Sisolak almost won. So the Dems clearly won indies two years ago.

They will need to do so again because they have less margin for error than at any time since 2008, when their string of presidential victories here began. And it’s the reason that Hughes and others are optimistic that the Republicans, from top to bottom, can do much better this year.

One other data point: I am revising (for now) after seeing the numbers above my estimate of overall turnout down to between 1.3 million and 1.4 million. Obviously I will adjust if it seems to be much higher (or lower, but that is unlikely).

More when I get it, and I'll update later if those rurual (and maybe some Washoe) numbers post. Tell me where I am wrong or right at [email protected]. And if you appreciate this blog and the work of the remarkable Indy staff, please donate to our nonprofit. Thank you.

Updated, 10:45 PM, 10/15/24

Hello, blog mates.

It's late, I've just returned seeing the Warriors crush the Lakers (preseason but still satisfying) and not much new to report, so here are the numbers:

Still not meaningful at just a half of a percent. I continue to be frustrated that an urban county such as Washoe and a bunch of rural counties can post mail numbers, but Clark County officials say they won't have the staff to do so until...this weekend.

Washoe has only posted a few hundred mail ballots, and Dems have a lead early, 149-114, with 73 non-major-party voters. Doesn't mean much.

Early voting coming Saturday, maybe then Clark will start posting returned mail.

As always, email me with questions, etc., I am not looking at mentions on Twitter. And please donate if you can.

Updated, 8:50 PM, 10/14/24

Another SOS update shows a few hundred more mail ballots from rural Nevada and some counted from Washoe (109-102, Dems, but that's a tenth of a percent of total voters, so don't get excited).

Nearly 40 percent of the almost 8,000 ballots so far have come from Nye County, a deep-red county in rural Nevada, where 9 percent of voters have already returned their ballots. Nye is a place where Trump won by 40 percentage points in 2020, and Republicans have a 44 percent to 27 percent edge right now, and the indies will break decisively in Trump's direction, too. Deep-red Elko also has a disproportionately high turnout so far (7 percent) as does tiny but deeply red Lincoln (10 percent). It will be interesting to see if Republicans continue to return mail ballots at a high rate in the counties where Trump needs high turnout.

The numbers:

Still can't tell much until Clark mail starts to post, but that may not happen until the weekend.

More when I get it.

Updated, 4:10 PM, 10/14/24

Greetings, fellow ravenous data types.

We probably won't have any serious data until this weekend, when early voting begins and mail ballots start to be catalogued in urban Nevada, where about 90 percent of the turnout will be. (I'm trying to speed them up, but no one listens to me.)

In the meantime -- and while I am nervously awaiting the beginning of the Bills game -- I wanted to show you a chart that indicates just how much Clark County voter registration has changed since the last two elections. The statewide numbers are below, as you may recall, showing how the Dem lead is now under 1 percent. And the Clark advantage, once in the 13 percent range a few cycles ago, is now under 7 percent for the first time in The Reid Machine era.

I will start talking about the Clark County firewall once early voting begins, the cushion Dems historically have built in the southern bastion that generally has held off losses in the rest of the state. The firewall was under 30,000 in 2022, a non-presidential year, and 90,000 in 2020 -- a more apples to apples comparison. The Dem registration lead now is 98,000 voters, so they would have to at least hold their own with indies and get robust turnout of the base to match the 2020 total.

Here's the chart that shows the registration changes since Joe Biden won Clark by 9 percentage points in 2020:

As you can see, the Dem voter edge in 2020 in Clark was 156,000 (140,000, if you account for 75,000 Clark County voters rendered inactive after the primary but technically stayed on the active rolls because the locals missed a federal deadline to remove them.)

That's still about 35 percent more than it is now. Will it matter? The answer, and you will hear this from me a lot as time goes on, is: it all depends on the indies.

As always, email me at [email protected] with questions, criticism, praise or good Aaron Rodgers jokes. (I don't check Twitter mentions anymore -- and, man, has my mental health improved! -- so don't ping me there.) And if you appreciate this blog, please consider donating to our nonprofit.

More when I have it

Updated, 9:40 AM, 10/12/24

Good morning, faithful blog mates.

Early voting starts a week from today – that’s why Barack Obama is coming to help juice Dem turnout – and urban mail ballots will begin coming in next week.

Only about 6,000 mail ballots have been tabulated, almost all in rural Nevada – that’s .3 percent of active voters. So this means….nothing.

I’ll post this chart on every update:

The urban ballots are about a fifth of this total, and they are mostly what is known as EASE (Effective Absentee System for Elections) ballots. These are mostly military or overseas ballots.

The rurals – 15 of 17 Nevada counties – will be a landslide for Trump. How big? Here are the margins in 2020:

Only the capital, Carson City, is even remotely competitive for Dems.

In 2020, the Dems won urban Nevada – almost 90 percent of the vote – by a combined 8 percentage points, which offset the rural GOP tsunami enough for Biden to win by 2.5 percentage points. If the urban margin drops a couple of points or the rural numbers tick up a bit, the election here will not be over on Nov. 5. (Mail ballots actually can be counted for four days, so it may be longer.)

Something to look forward to!

As always, email me at [email protected] with any errors, thoughts or questions. (I won’t answer on Twitter, so don’t waste your time there, but I will answer your email.)

Updated, 6 PM, 10/10/24

Numbers have been updated, but not a huge change, faithful blog mates: 2,208-1,408 for the GOP, and 1,556 others. It's almost all rural data. By the way, more others than Dems is not that surprising in rural Nevada, where most of those indies will vote Republican.

The urban mail will start coming back next week and then in-person early voting starts on Oct. 19. But this week will be the high-water mark for the Elko-Nye axis and its impact on the election! To be fair to those two relatively large rural counties, the GOP landslides there in the early going may -- may! -- be a harbinger that Republicans have grown to love mail ballots. But it is....way too early.

Five thousand voters represents only .3 percent, so, please, no one get excited. Unless, of course, you are a Twitter troll -- then have at it, declare the race over.

I often will link or quote other analysts here because I don't have all the answers -- just most of them: Jeremy Hughes, the experienced operative in Nevada races, has started up his excellent "Data Dive," and today he highlighted something I have been tracking as well, the shifting Clark registration numbers that have made the Dems apparently vulnerable:

Something is happening in Clark County. Since Oct 1, Republicans have gained 1,118 more registrations than the Democrats. 

In the first 9 days in 2018, Democrats gained 2,038 on Republicans in Clark.

In 2020, Democrats gained 2,639.

In 2022, Democrats gained 2,387.

So suffice to say, this is not normal and goes against all previous trends we've seen in Nevada. The Democrat's Clark County advantage has dropped from 7.02% to 6.89%.

It used to be twice that, just a few cycles ago. It is significant. Whether it is meaningful in the results is yet to be determined. But: Math matters.

More when I have it...Feel free to ask questions and, need I remind you, donate to our nonprofit site if you appreciate this work.

Updated, 6 PM, 10/9/24

Not too many more ballots reported -- 4,222 in all, or .2 percent. Urban Nevada hasn't reported much yet, so not surprising Rs have a 42 percent to 28 percent lead in the rurals. Not enough data yet to draw any conclusions, but I will be keeping my eye on how many people in each party are voting by mail as early voting starts in eight days.

Here's what the early-mail-Election Day breakdown looked like in 2020 -- remember this was at the height of COVID, but mail is becoming more accepted here:

---

This is a very useful link for any fellow data geeks. Professor Michael McDonald -- the good one (not the state GOP chair and fake elector) who doesn't live here -- does a great job of tracking voting across the country. I am happy to steal good work from him, Dr. John Samuelson and others as the election progresses. The more data, the better.

More when I have more to say...

----

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.