Nevada Is Turning Red In 2020

Turnout in Nevada early voting looks great for Trump and I believe it will flip to a red state in this election.

In 2016 Clinton won by 20K votes, the entire state went red except for Clark (Las Vegas) and Washoe (Reno) counties:

In Washoe, Trump lost by roughly 2,500 votes despite higher Republican turnout, suggesting Independents favored Hillary in by about 39% to 24% (38% went 3rd party).

Currently early voting shows high turnout for both parties and Dems have a roughly 3,000 vote lead. Independents in this county broke for Hillary, so it will probably go blue again and maybe by a slightly higher margin.

In Clark county, Hillary beat Trump by 81,000 votes, but Democrats had a turnout advantage of 95,000. This means that Independents in Clark county are different then the freaks in Washoe, they broke almost 41% for Trump vs 33% for Hillary

As it stands now, Republicans in Clark county are behind Dems by 78K votes, which is 5K more than 2016:

Sounds like a bad thing right? It is not, at least I don’t think it is for the following reasons:

  • Republicans are killing it in early in person voting. They are up by almost 30K, in 2016 they lost that battle by 70K. I have been watching this turnout daily and it is always the same thing, more Republicans turning out then Dems
  • Even though the gap is 5K larger right now, the % between the two parties in Clark county is smaller. Both parties have turned out more people already than all 2016 early voting. Currently Republicans have turned out 73% of what Democrats have, that number is growing daily. In 2016 when early voting ended, Republican’s had 70% of the Dems final number
  • Put those two things together, plus the fact that Republicans beat Democrats in new voter registration since 2016 (both as a % and actual volume) AND knowing that every poll consistently says Republicans will turnout more voters on election day, you have a recipe for closing the gap between Rs and Ds in Clark county substantially (Trump only lost the entire state by around 25,000 votes).

The rest of the state! Outside of those two counties, the rest of Nevada is heavy Trump. In 2016, Trump received 97,000 votes vs Hillary getting only 40K. Independents broke heavily for Trump (55%) vs 10% for Hillary and 35% going somewhere else.

Taking the current 2020 early voting turnout and applying the independent vote the way it broke in 2016, Biden has a roughly 30K vote lead.

The turnout is shifting in favor of Republicans each day, but say on election day Trump still needs a 30,000 vote advantage. In a recent Nevada poll I wrote about, only 7% of Democrats were planning on voting on election day vs 29% of Republicans. At face value that is 52K Ds vs 181K Rs. If both numbers are off by 5%, e.g. the Republicans lose 5% and Democrats gain 5% (margin of error in the poll was 3.8%) that still gives Republicans 60,000 more votes than the Democrats.

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