Is Nevada in play?
Maybe, but that's not why Trump wants to win the Silver State
First of all, the Silver State is 32 and 8 in picking the winner in presidential elections. It’s gone Democratic 19 times, Republican 20 times,1 and once its Electors were committed to James Weaver, the Greenback Party candidate in 1880.
32-8. Quite a record. It’s even more impressive than that. They started out 6-6. Since Nevada shook loose its infatuation with William Jennings Bryan (he won the state 3 times), it’s gone with the winner 26 out of the last 28 elections.2
But that’s not why Donald Trump wants to win Nevada. Trump was denied a gaming license in the state. Plus, Bill Clinton won it twice and Hillary won it in 2016. Trump views the Election Map as personal not political.
Winning Nevada seems doable at first glance.
The problem is that Nevada clearly has swung to the Democratic side. Disregarding the Obama numbers, the GOP had a just over 3 point average advantage in voting percentages in 2000 and 2004 and post Obama, the Democrats had a bit better than a 2.4 point advantage. That’s a five point plus swing from Red to Blue.
The other problem is that third parties do well here — even when there is a decided interest in limiting third party votes on both sides (2004) or just on the Right (2012).
In 2000 and 2016 were significantly skewed. And 2020 was not a full return to normalcy election-wise in Nevada.
In 2000, Nader’s 2.46% of the electorate would have made it a closer contest for Al Gore, but Pat Buchanan (Reform Party) and Harold Browne (Libertarian Party) potentially kept Bush from passing the 50% threshold.
In 2016, Gary Johnson pulled 3.29% of the vote as the Libertarian candidate. Johnson, who also ran in 2012, won 1.08% 4 years earlier and Jo Jorgenson would win 1.05% in 2020 —the former number being better than the Libertarian’ Party’s average in 2012 and the latter number falling just below it in 2020.
What happened in 2020? Well, both the Libertarian and None of these Candidates numbers fell by 3.78%. And concomitantly both Biden’s and Trump’s numbers rose by over 2% each.
Wait, Kevin…None of these Candidates?
Yes, Nevada, in a concession to cynics and people who eschew party politics, allows this option.
In 2016, None of these Candidates garnered 2.54% of the vote (it got 1% in 2020). Given the fact that the option received 0.44%, 0.65%, and 0.57% in the three elections preceding the Clinton-Trump contest, it’s probably a testament to dislike of both candidates.
The numbers between 2020 and 2016 work out almost perfectly to explain the results.
In 2016, there were over 1.1 million votes cast. In 2020, over 1.4 million votes were cast - nearly a 25% increase.
In raw vote terms, a total of 279,991 additional votes were cast in 2020. The Libertarian ticket lost 22,401 votes and None of these shed 14,154 votes. Add all of that and you get to 316,546 votes. The Democratic and Republican tickets won an additional 322,058 votes in total.
It looks very much like Joe Biden, who saw a 164,226 vote increase over Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump, who won an additional 157,832 votes over his 2016 numbers in Nevada, were rewarded by Libertarian and None of these Candidate net raw vote losses between 2016 and 2020.
A few caveats.
First, a 25% increase in voters is huge. Whether it was new voters (i.e. moved to state), aggressive voter registration drives, or GOTV efforts, it’s a lot of voters to suddenly assess.
Two, COVID was a big factor here in 2020. In 2022, voters tossed the Democratic incumbent governor for a Republican over the same issue (mostly slowness in reopening things to “business, i.e. gambling, as usual”).
Third, it’s not clear how with its libertarian bent how Trump will overcome being roughly a full point down in raw votes in 2024 due to Chase Oliver.3 And polling notwithstanding (it rarely tests for third party support), Donald Trump needs to break 48% to have a chance to win here. 2000 and 2016 notwithstanding, two percent of the vote on average goes to non-Democratic/Republican Party options here.
And given the Republican skew of polling generally and the fact that polling in the Silver State is horribly skewed by partisan (actually just GOP leaning) pollsters,4 Nevada will likely be a “toss-up” state for a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_Nevada
Jimmy Carter lost the state in 1976, but was elected President. Hillary Clinton won the state in 2016, but Trump won the Electoral College vote.
Chase Oliver is the Libertarian Party presidential candidate.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/arizona-and-nevada-have-become-ground-zero-for-partisan-polls/