Nevada - 2024 Election Compendium

Topic: 2024 Election Analysis

Nevada 2024 Presidential Election Review

Author’s Note: All 2024 Election Reviews can be found here.

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Outcome

Trump +3.1% (+46,008)

My Prediction

Trump +2.5% (+35,125)

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Preface

New Hampshire aside, Nevada had the least electoral votes up for grabs of any battleground state in the 2024 cycle. There was never much of a chance Nevada was going to be the decisive state (the one to push Trump over 270 with nothing left to save him), but that would have been the case if we would have found ourselves with Trump having carried North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, but also having lost Georgia, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Michigan. That would have created a national crisis as Nevada’s filthy electoral process played out like a rigged casino game in the shadiest part of town.

If you want just about everything that can be wrong about election administration (except for Ranked Choice Voting) shoved into one single battleground state, then you’d choose Nevada. To further complicate things against Republican candidates, the two largest counties cast 7 out of 8 every eight ballots in statewide races and continue to find absentee ballots until they’re tired of counting. Things used to be much rosier for the GOP, as the party’s presidential nominees won all but two races between 1968 and 2004, but with the rapid urbanization of Las Vegas and a Hispanic-driven demographic shift at full speed for several decades, Democrats became the party to beat two decades ago.

Since Obama’s high point victory in 2008 (+12.5%), Republicans have drastically tightened the state’s party registration advantage to nearly dead even. Trump’s two close races, of which the latter was certainly ripped off thanks to 2020’s special brand of malfeasance, and his obvious traction with minority voters evident in party registration statistics made me confident the math was there for Trump to win Nevada in 2024. I arrived at my prediction of Trump +2.5% by taking the average of the pessimistic model, which gave Harris a 1.1% edge, and the registrations model, giving Trump a 3.6% advantage. I made a special note that Sam Brown, veteran and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, should be on the lookout for the late ballots that led to the political demise of political legacy Adam Laxalt. More on that to follow.

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Analysis

· 16 of 17 counties in Nevada showed a shift in registration toward the Republican Party from 2020 to 2024, moving the state from D+4.7% to D+0.5%. A major voter roll purge in Clark County brought the statewide registration battle nearly even toward the end of the cycle, disparately impacting Democrats (surprise). Only massively Republican Eureka County, diluted by Automatic Voter Registration and depopulation, tipped to the left:

· Trump improved in 14 of 17 counties by raw vote margin, most notably in all-important Clark County by 63,787 in overall margin, which was enough on its own to tip the state in his direction. Esmerelda, Lander, and White Pine Counties, all tiny and maxed out, tilted slightly left by raw vote margin, but only by 90 votes collectively. Lander (and Eureka) still moved Republican by percentage, meaning the party registration indicator went 14 for 17 (82.4%) in determining the trajectory of each county by margin. County breakdowns below:

· The chart below captures the enormous reduction in Democrat margin in Clark and Washoe Counties from 2020 to 2024, which came out to a shift of 72,527 votes rightward, as predicted by the voter registration index shifts:

· It is important to note that Trump’s margin of +75,771 in the outlying 15 county equivalents would not have been sufficient to flip Nevada on its own. These counties are mostly maxed out as a collective, requiring major progress in Clark and Washoe Counties to flip the state:

· Harris lagged Biden by just 1,665 ballots in Clark County, despite Trump’s gain of 62,122 over his 2020 count. It is clear the loose elections laws in Nevada have allowed its large counties to retain counterfeit ballots in great quantities. In Washoe County, Harris gained 1,943 ballots over Biden’s count; she gained 1,711 over Biden statewide, despite a Democrat drop-off in Arizona of 3.6%. Incorporating her decline in Arizona, Harris likely has at least 25,000 counterfeit ballots aiding her in Nevada, even when accepting the 2020 results as normal, which they most certainly were not.

· Referencing the map above, Harris lagged Biden in eight counties. If I am correct that there are at least 25,000 ballots over and above what her likely ballot count would be even baking in the 2020 results, then it should be clear given Jacky Rosen’s +24,059 margin over Purple Heart veteran Sam Brown that the U.S. Senate seat was the target with the presidential electoral votes out of reach. Rosen finally “won” her race on Election Day plus four after Clark and Washoe gushed out absentee ballots:

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Quality Checks

Statewide Presidential Ballot Count