Why Nevada could hold the key to Trump’s path to victory this November
Nevada is the smallest of the six key swing states, but it might be the most important. That’s because it, like Arizona, is tilting Republican — and winning there gives Donald Trump another lane to capture the White House.
The Silver State, like Caesar’s Gaul, is divided into three parts: metro Las Vegas (Clark County), metro Reno (Washoe County) and everything else. Metro Reno is closely divided, although it now tends to back Democrats narrowly. The rest of the state is heavily Republican, with some counties giving Trump as much as 88 percent of the vote.
Nevada has voted Democratic for president since 2008 because metro Las Vegas casts roughly 70 percent of the state’s votes. It is a Democratic bastion: No Democratic candidate for president or senator has lost Clark County since 2006.
But because of the state’s Republican-heavy rural counties, carrying Clark isn’t enough for Democrats to win. Nevada political journalist Jon Ralston measures the Democratic margin of Clark County’s decisive early voting ballots every year to ascertain whether the party has a chance to outvote the Republican rurals.
To give the Democrat a shot, this “Clark County firewall” has to be somewhere around 7 percent.
Traditionally, this has been a couple of points below the county’s Democratic registration margin over the Republicans, giving the Democrats some wiggle room if their voter enthusiasm trailed the GOP’s.
That edge has been rapidly dropping during President Biden’s term, however. In 2020, Democrats had roughly 87,000 more active registered voters than Republican statewide, and more than a 154,000-person lead in Clark.
Biden won the state by only 33,596 votes, which shows how crucial that Democratic registration lead has traditionally been to party hopes.
By 2022, the Democratic lead dropped to only about 52,000 people, and only a bit more than 126,500 in Clark. This allowed Republican Joe Lombardo to win the gubernatorial contest while Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto beat Republican Adam Laxalt by a measly 7,928 votes.
Since then, the Democratic lead has shrunk even more. The latest voter registration statistics give Democrats only a 29,000-person lead statewide, and only a 109,000-voter edge in Clark.
Assuming registered independents vote as they have previously, this means the Republicans should have a narrow expected 10,000- to 20,000-vote lead after the votes are counted.
That might be a big assumption because of a change in Nevada’s voter registration laws, though.
People are now automatically registered to vote when they apply for or make changes to their driver’s license. People have been choosing not to register in any major party since this law was implemented.
It could be the case that Democratic voters who don’t care about party primaries are simply registering as independents, making that voter pool more Democratic than it has historically been. If so, the state’s partisan cast may be closer to even than one that tilts slightly toward Republicans.
An even slate, though, would be a huge improvement over what Republicans have faced for the last decade and a half. That alone gives them hope they can flip the state to red.
Nevada was clearly trending for Trump before Biden dropped out of the race. Trump was leading the Real Clear Politics poll average by 5.6 points earlier this summer, and had not been behind in any poll since October 2023.
Polls taken since Vice President Kamala Harris’ entry show the state is roughly tied. This is good news for Democrats, but even this shift shows the state has moved to the right since 2024.
Trump continually trailed in state polls in 2020, losing the state by the same 2.4-point margin the final polling average predicted. Running even with Harris, then, is already a significant pro-Trump shift.
That shift doesn’t seem surprising when one examines the state of Nevada’s economy. Its unemployment rate was 5.4 percent in the latest figures, for June, and was 6.3 percent in metro Las Vegas — both much higher than the national rate of 4.1 percent.
Nevada unemployment is probably even higher today given the national rise to 4.3 percent in July.
Housing prices have also skyrocketed during the Biden era. In Las Vegas, the median price for a single-family home has risen by $80,000, or over 20 percent, since June 2021. The median price for a condominium or townhome — which are much more affordable and hence likelier to be bought by working-class voters — has jumped by nearly 40 percent to $295,000.
Gas prices are also much higher in Nevada than they are nationally. The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded is currently $3.92 in Clark County and a whopping $4.46 in Reno’s Washoe County, per AAA — that’s compared to a national average of $3.46.
Fewer jobs and higher prices is not a record Harris will want to run on.
Nevada’s small size — it has only six electoral votes — belies the potentially crucial role it can play in November’s election.
Suppose Trump flips Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, but fails to win any of the three Midwestern swing states. That would give him only 268 electoral votes — two short of a majority.
But if he also flipped Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, centered on Omaha and its suburbs, he would have 269. Neither he nor Harris would have a majority in that case, and the Constitution then throws the election into the hands of the House of Representatives.
In that scenario, Trump would be guaranteed to win even if Democrats have a majority of seats because the votes are cast by state, not by member. State votes are cast by a majority of voting members, which makes the partisan balance in each state of potentially crucial import.
Republicans are nearly guaranteed a majority of House seats in 26 states after this fall’s election because almost all of the Democrats’ House targets are in states they already control or are tied.
A tie therefore goes to Trump — but only if he wins Nevada.
Trump won’t gamble with his prospects, which is why he’s dangling eliminating federal income taxes on tipped income. That’s a big lure for employees of Nevada’s numerous casinos, hotels and restaurants, and could make the difference in the state.
Nevada’s Democratic pedigree means Republicans cannot take the state for granted. But the political trends and economic conditions are unmistakable.
Nevada really is in play this November, and it could be the straw that stirs the political drink.
