With only three days to go to vote early in Nevada, Republican turnout continues to crush Democrats.
As of Tuesday, the GOP enjoys an unprecedented (in the state’s early vote history) lead of 42,796 votes. Earlier this week, when Breitbart News reported on these numbers, Republicans led by only 26,000 votes and everyone assumed that was the peak.
Nope.
So far, 309,905 Republicans have voted early, compared to just 264,109 Democrats. Another 203,012 Independents have also voted early. This gives the GOP a 5.5-point lead.
The usual caveats apply: We don’t know who these people voted for. We don’t know if Democrats will flood early voting over the next few days. We don’t know how much of the Election Day vote has been cannibalized in these early votes. We don’t know who will win the Independent vote. Still, there is reason for Republicans to feel some optimism if for no other reason than Democrat enthusiasm appears, at least for now, to be pretty weak.
In Nevada, the biggest county is where you find Las Vegas — Clark County. This is where Democrats have always built a firewall of votes no amount of Election Day Republican voting could overcome. In 2020, Clark County Democrats had already built a firewall of over 72,000 votes around this same time in early voting. Today, that firewall is just 6,200.
We are seeing similar enthusiasm from early-voting Republicans in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Arizona. Granted, in some of these states, like Pennsylvania, there have been more Democrat early voters than Republican early voters, but the percentage of the Republican early vote returns is higher than in the past, and when you’re talking about a 50/50 state, that means something.
Going into the last few days of early voting, Democrats are worrying about why their voters are not showing up (so far) in the expected numbers.
Republicans are worrying about whom those Independents are voting for, and if all this early voting merely ate up the advantage Republicans tend to enjoy on Election Day.
With the polls so close and so many unknowns, all you can safely say is this: Given a choice, I’d prefer to be Trump rather than Harris right now.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
