OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
In a Sun Belt state that hasn’t gone red since 2004, a huge wave of early Republican voters could make the difference.
According to the Nevada Independent, there are now more Republican Nevadans who have voted early or by mail than Democratic Nevadans. This rarely happens because Democrats are so excited to vote on any day except Election Day.
Veteran reporter Jon Ralston says that even though there were more Democratic ballots sent in overnight from Clark County, which has a lot of people, it wasn’t enough to cut into the GOP’s lead in early voting, where Republicans have sent in 40,000 more ballots than Democrats, a 5.3% lead. The GOP has a 5.7% lead over the Democrats in the state, with 40,000 more votes cast than the Democrats.
“This has never happened, not even close, in The Reid Machine Era,” Ralston wrote about Harry Reid, the strong Senate leader who has since died.
Clark County, which is centered on Las Vegas, is where Republicans are most excited about giving Trump a win in a state that hasn’t had a Republican candidate since 2004.
There, Republicans are almost 9% ahead in turnout while the “usually reliable Clark Dem firewall has all but evaporated,” Ralston writes. Unlike 2020 or 2022, the phenomenon he’s seeing has no precedent, underscoring how badly Republicans want Trump to return to the White House. “This is a unicorn year. We have never seen this,” he adds.
Nevadans, who are mostly temporary workers in the service industry and live in a state with the worst housing market in the country, are apparently sick of giving Democrats the benefit of the doubt every time they run for president. Politico reported earlier this month that Trump had opened up a 5-point lead over Harris.
This was a shocking development in a state that Trump lost by almost 2.5% four years ago and was thought to be out of the running this time.
Instead, he has opened or grown leads in those states and others, including Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.
These are all important swing states that will decide the winner.
This comes as the Nevada Supreme Court rejected a challenge by Republicans and ruled that mail-in ballots received up to three days after election day could still be counted.
The Hill reported that a majority on the state high court ruled that the state law requiring mail-in ballots to be counted, even if the postmark “cannot be determined,” applies to ballots that have no postmark as well as those with illegible postmarks.
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that said ballots received three days after the Nov. 5 election day could still be counted.
The decision dealt a setback to Republicans, who argued that the law should only apply to ballots with illegible postmarks.
“If a voter properly and timely casts their vote by mailing their ballot before or on the day of the election, and through a post office omission the ballot is not postmarked, it would go against public policy to discount that properly cast vote,” Nevada’s majority opinion read, according to The Hill.
“Indeed, there is no principled distinction between mail ballots where the postmark is ‘illegible’ or ‘smudged’ and those with no postmark — in each instance, the date the mail ballot was received by the post office cannot be determined,” the court filing continued.
The high court upheld the district court’s decision that the GOP lacked standing, stating that the plaintiffs did not present sufficient evidence to demonstrate that mail ballots would be subject to voter fraud or that the existing security measures were inadequate to address those concerns.
Additionally, the high court dismissed the argument that mail ballots have a partisan bias favoring Democrats.
In a statement to The Hill, the Republican National Committee contended that the ruling could impact election integrity.
“Requiring ballots to be postmarked on or before election day is a critical election integrity safeguard that ensures ballots mailed after election day are not counted,” said RNC Spokesperson Claire Zunk. “It is also a requirement of Nevada law. By allowing Nevada officials to ignore the law’s postmark requirement, the state’s highest court has undermined the integrity of Nevada’s elections.”
Meanwhile, pollster Nate Silver’s most recent forecast is that Trump could win all of the important split states in the 2024 election. Silver’s research shows that Trump has a 24.4% chance of winning all seven swing states in November.
This is the most likely outcome. The forecast also says that Harris has a 15.6% chance of winning all the battleground states.
It also shows that Harris would win the race if she won all the swing states except Arizona and Georgia, where Trump is currently ahead.
FiveThirtyEight’s prediction has also changed in Trump’s favor. It now says that Trump has a 51% chance of winning the election, while Harris only has a 49% chance.
At the same time, RealClearPolitics predicts that Trump will win all four swing states, giving him 312 Electoral College votes to Harris’s 227.
Famed polling guru Nate Silver’s ‘gut says Donald Trump’ will win 2024 presidential election pic.twitter.com/ZjofA0EAVM
— Martin Walsh (@MWalshUS) October 24, 2024
