Nevada is an
incredibly important state because at the moment it appears to be one of the
last few states to decide the election.
As a reminder, among the core states that President Obama needed to
reach 272 electoral votes in 2012, the smallest margin was in Colorado, and the
next four in ascending order of margin were Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa
and then Nevada. The polling at the moment suggests that Iowa is slipping away
from the Democrats, but that Virginia is moving toward the Democrats. In that
exchange Democrats gain 7 electoral votes to be sitting on 279. This allows Secretary Clinton the wiggle room
of losing either Nevada or New Hampshire and still winning. (The Maine 2nd also looks quite
imperiled for Democrats as well, but it is only worth 1 electoral vote)
Nevada is a
state replicating one of the main battle lines of this election. Trump’s having
alienated Hispanics is balanced by his over-performance with whites without a
college degree. Polls are also showing Trump leading here by an average of 2 points.
But, as we noted last week, among the most contested states, Nevada was one where
Obama most outperformed his polling average. In 2010 this was also the site of
horrible polling failure, as Harry Reid was trailing by almost 3 points, and
won by more than 5 points. This is not
surprising. Nevada has one of the most difficult to poll electorates because it
is in a near constant state of flux as people frequently move in and out of the
state. They also move around locally a great deal. And all this mobility goes double for Clark
County(Las Vegas) This is why in Nevada
it might be more important to pay attention to the fundamentals than the polls.
President
Obama beat Mitt Romney by 67,806 votes in the state of Nevada in 2012. Donald Trump is clearly poised to do better
than Romney in the counties outside of Clark (Las Vegas). But to show just how important Clark County
is consider that even if Donald Trump doubled the margin in the rural counties
outside of Clark and Washoe (Reno) and turned a 7,000 deficit into a 20,000 win
in Washoe (Reno), he still would not have enough to win the state if Clinton
held the 2012 margin in Clark County.
Such massive swings are unlikely simply because such swings are not
often seen in Presidential elections. So
Trump needs to make up some serious ground in Clark County itself. Clark County
saw a slight increase in the raw vote for Obama from 2008 to 2012. Obama got
380,765 in 2008 but 389,936 in 2012.
Romney cut the margin in Clark slightly by adding almost 32,000
votes. The questions that exist for
Trump is whether there are more votes to find for a Republican in Clark County,
and whether there is some danger that Trump will also see some slide back. Nevada is a state where roughly in 1 in 10
voters in 2012 was a member of the LDS Church. Romney unsurprisingly did very
well with them. But as we have seen from polling in next door Utah, Trump
continues to struggle with this group. LDS sentiment is something else to watch
for as Trump tries to whittle away at this margin.
In the end
Nevada is simply a turnout game. If Democrats can get enough of their voters to
the polls there are probably not enough Republicans in the entire state to make
up for it. A big advantage that
Democrats have in that effort is that Nevada has some of the most convenient
early voting laws in the nation, Democratic GOTV efforts have kept up with
these laws, giving Democrats plenty of time to turn out their vote and lot of
skill with it too.
The bottom
line is the demographics favor Clinton just a little bit more than polls favor
Trump, but it is exceptionally close. We will have our eyes focused like a
laser on the early vote and should have a decent sense which way things are
going based on those numbers which come out daily starting in Clark County on
the 22nd of October.
0 comments:
Post a Comment