John Ralston Early Voting Report 10/09/24 [View all]
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.......
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:
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-2024