Nevada - 2024 Election Compendium

Topic: 2024 Election Analysis

Nevada 2024 Presidential Election Review

Author’s Note: All 2024 Election Reviews can be found here.

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Outcome

Trump +3.1% (+46,008)

My Prediction

Trump +2.5% (+35,125)

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Preface

New Hampshire aside, Nevada had the least electoral votes up for grabs of any battleground state in the 2024 cycle. There was never much of a chance Nevada was going to be the decisive state (the one to push Trump over 270 with nothing left to save him), but that would have been the case if we would have found ourselves with Trump having carried North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, but also having lost Georgia, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Michigan. That would have created a national crisis as Nevada’s filthy electoral process played out like a rigged casino game in the shadiest part of town.

If you want just about everything that can be wrong about election administration (except for Ranked Choice Voting) shoved into one single battleground state, then you’d choose Nevada. To further complicate things against Republican candidates, the two largest counties cast 7 out of 8 every eight ballots in statewide races and continue to find absentee ballots until they’re tired of counting. Things used to be much rosier for the GOP, as the party’s presidential nominees won all but two races between 1968 and 2004, but with the rapid urbanization of Las Vegas and a Hispanic-driven demographic shift at full speed for several decades, Democrats became the party to beat two decades ago.

Since Obama’s high point victory in 2008 (+12.5%), Republicans have drastically tightened the state’s party registration advantage to nearly dead even. Trump’s two close races, of which the latter was certainly ripped off thanks to 2020’s special brand of malfeasance, and his obvious traction with minority voters evident in party registration statistics made me confident the math was there for Trump to win Nevada in 2024. I arrived at my prediction of Trump +2.5% by taking the average of the pessimistic model, which gave Harris a 1.1% edge, and the registrations model, giving Trump a 3.6% advantage. I made a special note that Sam Brown, veteran and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, should be on the lookout for the late ballots that led to the political demise of political legacy Adam Laxalt. More on that to follow.

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Analysis

· 16 of 17 counties in Nevada showed a shift in registration toward the Republican Party from 2020 to 2024, moving the state from D+4.7% to D+0.5%. A major voter roll purge in Clark County brought the statewide registration battle nearly even toward the end of the cycle, disparately impacting Democrats (surprise). Only massively Republican Eureka County, diluted by Automatic Voter Registration and depopulation, tipped to the left:

· Trump improved in 14 of 17 counties by raw vote margin, most notably in all-important Clark County by 63,787 in overall margin, which was enough on its own to tip the state in his direction. Esmerelda, Lander, and White Pine Counties, all tiny and maxed out, tilted slightly left by raw vote margin, but only by 90 votes collectively. Lander (and Eureka) still moved Republican by percentage, meaning the party registration indicator went 14 for 17 (82.4%) in determining the trajectory of each county by margin. County breakdowns below:

· The chart below captures the enormous reduction in Democrat margin in Clark and Washoe Counties from 2020 to 2024, which came out to a shift of 72,527 votes rightward, as predicted by the voter registration index shifts:

· It is important to note that Trump’s margin of +75,771 in the outlying 15 county equivalents would not have been sufficient to flip Nevada on its own. These counties are mostly maxed out as a collective, requiring major progress in Clark and Washoe Counties to flip the state:

· Harris lagged Biden by just 1,665 ballots in Clark County, despite Trump’s gain of 62,122 over his 2020 count. It is clear the loose elections laws in Nevada have allowed its large counties to retain counterfeit ballots in great quantities. In Washoe County, Harris gained 1,943 ballots over Biden’s count; she gained 1,711 over Biden statewide, despite a Democrat drop-off in Arizona of 3.6%. Incorporating her decline in Arizona, Harris likely has at least 25,000 counterfeit ballots aiding her in Nevada, even when accepting the 2020 results as normal, which they most certainly were not.

· Referencing the map above, Harris lagged Biden in eight counties. If I am correct that there are at least 25,000 ballots over and above what her likely ballot count would be even baking in the 2020 results, then it should be clear given Jacky Rosen’s +24,059 margin over Purple Heart veteran Sam Brown that the U.S. Senate seat was the target with the presidential electoral votes out of reach. Rosen finally “won” her race on Election Day plus four after Clark and Washoe gushed out absentee ballots:

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Quality Checks

Statewide Presidential Ballot Count

· 2004 829,587

· 2008 967,848 (+138,261, +16.7%)

· 2012 1,014,918 (+47,070, +4.9%)

· 2016 1,125,385 (+110,467, +10.9%)

· 2020 1,405,376 (+279,991, +24.9%)

· 2024 1,484,840 (+79,464, +5.7%)

Thanks to the spike in ballots in 2020, Nevada’s 2024 ballot count is still more than 80,000 total ballots ahead of what I would have expected from an eight-year spike since 2016. Clearly, there was less manipulation present pound-for-pound than there was in 2020, but then again, Clark and Washoe Counties almost certainly retained nearly all of their baked-in cheating due to the “Wild West” anything goes election system enshrined into Nevada’s legal code.

The net gain in ballots in 2020 (+279,991) brought about by a wholesale alteration of the existing election system and the COVID scam was more than double the spike in total ballots found for Obama’s 2008 run in a state that has grown at a consistently high rate since the 1950s, and if recent population estimates are to be believed, is beginning to taper its growth as the two major urban counties reach saturation.

Again, the total ballot count in Nevada appears to be at least 80,000 over what I would expect for the 2024 cycle considering an eight-year increase.

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Key Counties

Clark County

Clark County contains metro Las Vegas and accounted for 69.5% of Nevada’s 2024 ballot count, which makes it even more significant to Nevada than Maricopa County is to adjacent Arizona. No GOP presidential candidate has won the county since 1988, but Harris’s 2.6% margin of victory is the smallest Democrat margin since then, and her 27,135-ballot margin is the lowest since Kerry carried a much smaller version of the county by 26,430 in 2004.

Nevada is a simple math equation for Republicans. Don’t get killed in Clark County and you should win the state, especially since Washoe is a generally competitive county in which no candidate gets too big of a margin out of. As shown above, Trump benefitted greatly from union support within the county, as well as an influx of out-of-state conservatives looking for better living situations and the ongoing conversion of minority Democrats to Republican voters, including Asians (especially Filipinos). The county has had a Republican drift by party registration since Obama’s 2008 win, and if trends persist, the next GOP nominee would likely be the favorite to carry the county if not for Nevada’s reckless elections laws which inspire nothing but a lack of confidence in the process.

Until further notice, Republicans are left with little choice but to play the ballot collection game in the county, especially in population dense areas in Las Vegas, where Democrats harvest votes for weeks in the run-up to any important election. If Nevada’s laws were brought under reasonable control, results would look much more like the in-person early voting turnout from the county, which was overwhelmingly Republican in 2024, enabling me to correctly predict Trump as the statewide victor.

Washoe County

Clark’s evil cousin, Washoe County, is much smaller (17.8% of 2024 ballot count statewide), but when combined with Clark, makes up nearly seven-eighths of the statewide ballot count. The county contains metro Reno and, like Clark, a large but sparsely populated geographic area outside of the big city and its suburban cities and towns. It is heavily influenced by urban factors, unions, ballot trafficking rings, and considerable local corruption, especially in the judiciary.

This county is usually competitive and doesn’t provide massive margin, with only one candidate getting more than 52% of the vote since 1988 (Obama in 2008). Trump would have flipped Washoe County if not for the drip, drip, drip of mail-in ballots for more than a week after Election Day. Running close to even in Washoe County, or better yet, ahead, will be a sign Republicans should be the favored party in Nevada, but cleaning up elections will mean a cleanup of the corrupt registration file, universal mail-in balloting, and ballot harvesting, just like in Clark County.

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Opportunities for Election Manipulation

Familiarize yourself with the grading criteria for my election ratings. Here is how Nevada rates with regard to the most common election demerits and its own unique traits:

· Voter ID – Nevada has no identification requirements.

· Same Day Registration – Nevada allows for same day registration.

· Ballot Harvesting – Ballot harvesting is fully authorized in Nevada, as anyone authorized by the voter may return a ballot.

· Unique Corruption – At the end of October, after monitoring early voting returns heavily favoring Trump and Brown, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that non-postmarked ballots could be counted for up to three days after Election Day. It doesn’t take a Blackjack expert to realize what is going on with a decision like this; mail takes several days to get where it is going. Printing a ballot off, filling it out, and dunking it into a drop box takes minutes. Nevada has many rules and games it plays regarding the returning of mail ballots and how long counties are authorized to count them, which led to me coining the phrase Laxalted, named for Adam Laxalt, who lost his 2022 U.S. Senate race immediately after boasting about the seemingly impossible percentage of votes his opponent must net after Election Day from the drop boxes. Unfortunately, as I predicted, Sam Brown was also Laxalted.

· Automatic Voter Registration – Nevada operates Automatic Voter Registration, which is the fastest way to pollute voter rolls with duplicated or otherwise ineligible voter registrations, which are then assigned mail ballots per state law.

· Excessive Mail-In Balloting – Nevada is a universal mail-in voting state, in which every registration (not necessarily every voter) receives a mail-in ballot. In-person options are available during the early voting period and on Election Day, but mail ballots are mailed to the entire registration database.

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The Road Ahead

Times change and so do voting coalitions. Nevada should continue to favor the GOP slate on paper as long as the traction with Hispanic and Asian working-class voters persist. If Republicans go back to Romney politics when Trump leaves the political scene, Nevada will go back to being dominated by its two gigantic urban counties and backing Democrat presidential and U.S. Senate candidates (of which it currently has two).

The outlying 15 counties are mostly maxed out for the GOP, especially relative to the growth of the two key counties, Clark and Washoe. In fact, several of the rural counties are now worth fewer votes in margin because they are losing population and are at an apogee point of Republican support. Simply put, the future lies in the hands of the same two counties it always has, and for either party. A new Republican coalition that sticks to the new messaging can continue to move things on paper in Clark County, and to a lesser extent, Washoe, but major reforms are needed to restore trust in elections, especially after the debacle surrounding the theft of Sam Brown’s Senate seat.

Nevada will not have easily winnable elections until universal mail-in balloting is struck by a higher court and, just like Clark County underwent in 2024, the rest of the state is forced to purge its voter rolls, ideally eliminating Automatic Voter Registration. Short of Ranked Choice Voting, Nevada has legalized everything that can go wrong with running fair, transparent elections, and the ony reason Brown’s race was targeted instead of Trump’s is because Trump already had the national election in the bag, and taking the down ballot races was a more stealthy way to do business.

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Final Grade and Closing Commentary

The Top 5 Election Integrity Targets in Nevada are (in no order):

· Clark County

· Washoe County

· Nye County

· Douglas County

· Carson City

Most Suspect Outcome

· Nevada U.S. Senate – With Trump cruising to a majority of the vote in Nevada and having already wrapped up the Electoral College majority in eastern states, Brown’s race was within reach to snatch for Rosen, who won with less than 48% of the vote once primarily Clark and Washoe Counties counted mail and other drop box ballots for four days. Brown was Laxalted with the laws on the books in Nevada, which do nothing to prohibit manipulation and everything to obscure transparency. Of note, President Trump’s margin in Nevada would have likely cleared 5% in a race free of additional manipulation to that which took place in 2020.

Nevada receives a Grade of 4 - Highest Concern – based on its demerits, known troubles, Automatic Voter Registration, universal mail-in balloting, corrupt judiciary and unique electoral corruption, and unrestricted ballot harvesting, which cost a U.S. Senate seat. It is one of just five states that will receive the most severe rating with regard to the 2024 election and its framework governing elections.

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Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.