As Early Voting Kicks Off in Nevada, Nonpartisan Voters Hold the Key

When Nevada’s early voting period kicks off on Oct. 19, both parties will aggressively seek to secure their base votes, but the biggest prize in the smallest of the nation’s seven battleground states will be getting nonpartisan voters to the polls.

At stake in the triple-tier battleground state are Nevada’s six electoral college votes and U.S. Senate and House races that could determine which party controls Congress in January 2025.

The focus will be on Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Henderson, where about 70 percent of the state’s 3.2 million residents live and three of its four congressional districts are located.

Democrats have an advantage of nearly 140,000 registered voters over Republicans in Clark County, but they are outnumbered by 90,000 registered GOP voters outside the Las Vegas area.

The biggest bloc of voters in Clark County and statewide, however, is nonpartisan.

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More than 825,000 Nevadans—including 620,000 in Clark County—are registered to vote but not as a member of any party.

Add more than 180,000 third-party voters to the nonpartisan bloc, and more than 1 million of Nevada’s 2.4 million registered voters—and more than 950,000 of Clark County’s 1.73 million registered voters—are potentially up for grabs.

Galvanizing turnout for the Oct. 19 to Nov. 1 early in-person voting period and encouraging voters to cast mail-in ballots—all Nevada registered voters will receive their ballots by mail from Oct. 16–22—are key strategies for winning any race in a state where less than 15 percent of voters typically cast their ballots on Election Day.

Former President Barack Obama will be in Las Vegas on Saturday to rally Democrats to get voters to the polls during the first day of the two-week early voting period.

It is Obama’s first campaign-related visit to Nevada in support of the Democratic Party’s ticket this election cycle and follows his Oct. 18 stump in Tucson, Arizona, and his Oct. 10 rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The three states are among the seven battleground states where forecasters and pundits say the 2024 presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will be determined.

In 2020, then-Vice President Joe Biden edged Trump by 2.39 percentage points in Nevada, less than 34,600 votes. Democrats had a 110,000-voter registration advantage statewide that November.

While Republicans routinely have a 4-to-5 percentage point turnout advantage in Nevada, Democrats’ numerical edge—their Clark County “firewall”—has lifted their candidates to victories.

Democrats were also able to maintain their state legislature majorities, but former Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, a Republican, was elected governor, unseating incumbent Gov. Steve Sisolak.

Trump introduced his “no taxes on tips” campaign initiative during an August rally in Las Vegas, which Harris matched a month later, also during a Las Vegas stump.

That difference could be pivotal in Trump winning a state he lost by less than 2.4 percentage points four years ago with just 35 percent of the Latino vote.

Harris did a national Univision Town Hall in Las Vegas on Oct. 10 and two days later, Trump did a Hispanic roundtable in Henderson.

Many of the state’s Latino voters, and many who have come to the fast-growing state to work in the gaming and hospitality industry, are among Nevada’s 825,000 nonpartisan voters.

Many were registered to vote automatically when they got driver’s licenses or ID cards at the DMV. They did not register with a party and thus were auto-registered as nonpartisan.

The 65 percent 2020 nonpartisan/third-party turnout was 20-to-25 percent higher than what is typical for a constituency that is often not politically engaged.

And these voters will determine who wins the Nov. 5 elections in Nevada.

That is why Obama will be in town to kick-start the early vote drive Democrats need, not only to fire up the party’s base but to galvanize its ground game in Las Vegas to ferret out nonpartisan voters and get them to the polls or cast their mail-in ballots.

The former president rallied for Cortez Masto and the three Democratic House incumbents in November 2022 and for Biden in 2020.

Obama’s swing through western battleground states is part of a broader Harris campaign effort that will see former President Bill Clinton stumping in Georgia Oct. 20–21 before embarking on a North Carolina bus tour.