As two-week in-person balloting concludes, nearly half of the pivotal purple state’s voters have already made their Nov. 5 choices.
LAS VEGAS—Triple-tier battleground state Nevada’s two-week early voting period ended Nov. 1 with Republicans turning out in far higher numbers than Democrats while also posting significant gains in registered voters.
Those trends have GOP boosters confident former President Donald Trump could be the first Republican to win the Silver State since 2004. Challenger Sam Brown could unseat Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada), and at least one Democratic-held Las Vegas-area congressional seat could be flipped in the Nov. 5 election.
As of 8 a.m. PST Nov. 1, the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office reported 945,436 of Nevada’s 2.035 million registered “active” voters—46.5 percent—had cast ballots by mail or during the Oct. 19 to Nov. 1 in-person early voting period.
Of those ballots, Republicans cast 365,283, Democrats 320,527, and nonpartisans 259,626, a dramatic change from previous election cycles, most notably in 2020, when Democrats built early voting leads that Republicans could not overcome with Election Day turnouts.
Democrats still lead in returned mail-in ballots. Of 471,398 returned, 190,520 are from Democrats, 142,869 from Republicans—more than previous elections—and 138,009 from nonpartisans, according to the secretary of state’s office.
GOP voters have a sizable advantage in the in-person early vote count. Of the 474,038 ballots cast, 222,414 (47 percent) are from Republicans, 130,007 (27.4 percent) from Democrats, and 121,617 (25.7 percent) from nonpartisans, state data show.
While the secretary of state’s office will update statewide results at 8 a.m. PST on Nov. 2 to include the last day of early in-person voting, elections officials in most of Nevada’s 17 counties had posted closing-day figures in the hours after early voting ended 7 p.m. PST Nov. 1.
In Clark County, which includes the Las Vegas metropolitan area where 71 percent of the state’s 3.2 million residents live in three of Nevada’s four congressional districts—all occupied by Democrat incumbents—more than 650,000 of 1.467 million registered voters had cast ballots as of 1 p.m. Nov. 1, according to the county’s elections department.
By John Haughey
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