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    • Why Donald Trump dominated Kamala Harris and flipped Nevada
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    Why Donald Trump dominated Kamala Harris and flipped Nevada

    Pabio Posted on

    About 40,000 more Republicans than Democrats voted in Nevada’s general election, even though Democrats outnumber Democrats in the state.

    Republican turnout and an outdated Democratic campaign led Donald Trump to a bigger-than-expected victory over Kamala Harris in Nevada.

    That’s how four experts explained the state’s historic shift this week in favor of a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in 20 years.

    Although Trump’s victory had not been declared in Nevada as of Thursday morning — and Nevada’s final vote won’t be official until Nov. 15 — Trump was leading the Democratic vice president 51% to 47.2% with 90% of the vote. votes counted.

    Joe Biden’s margin of victory over Trump in 2020 was 2.4 points, so if that margin holds, that represents a 6.2 point swing back in favor of the Republican nominee.

    Many pollsters and election forecasters had considered Harris-Trump to be locked in a statistical tie.

    Trump’s victory provided evidence of Nevada’s swing state status, which inspired multiple visits by him and Harris as well as their running mates.

    “Democrats really need to do a full post-mortem, a thorough analysis of what went wrong and how to improve things in the future,” said Annette Magnus, owner of a consulting firm politics in southern Nevada and describes herself as a lifelong liberal and Democrat.

    A close defeat nationally could lead Democrats to view their candidate’s problem as the fault of a particular state or demographic they were unable to turn out, but losing all seven swing states probably should lead to deeper introspection.

    This is the view of Jeremy Gelman, professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno.

    “It’s a disaster for the Democratic Party,” he said of this crushing defeat.

    Meanwhile, conservative political consultant Chuck Muth thinks the Nevada Republican Party has failed in its ground game.

    “In a lot of these low-ballot legislative elections, it looks like the Republicans are going to lose,” Muth said.

    “They can’t blame Trump for being a hindrance to their success. He’s outdone what he’s done, and yet every other Republican (in Nevada) below him is losing. So if their ground game was so good, so we should have had a lot more wins than we ended up getting.

    “Right now it seems like all we have is Trump.”

    Trump’s ‘bring a friend and vote early’ strategy

    During JD Vance’s two visits to Reno as Trump’s chosen vice president, he encouraged each attendee to vote 10 times: once themselves and to bring nine friends and family members. He called it a “force multiplier.”

    Trump was ruder and got more laughs by conveying a similar message. He described a fictional woman dragging her husband, Hank, to the polls.

    “Hank, get off the couch and get that big ass over here,” he imagined him saying with a laugh at a late October gathering in Las Vegas. “We are going to vote for the president. We will transform our country.

    Trump and Vance repeatedly said they needed mass turnout to overcome perceived — and unsubstantiated — allegations of widespread cheating by Democrats. They wanted to “overwhelm the vote!” » and to make the election “Too big to rig!” »

    It was imperative, and the messages appeared on signs and videos that dotted their rallies and in texts to supporters shared online.

    At events with Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, their pro-vote message was much quieter: a slogan rather than an urgent call to action.

    “When we vote, we win,” they made the crowd chant.

    Magnus said the problem with that approach was assuming Democrats would mobilize in large numbers.

    “For Democrats, we always voted early, it was an assumed thing, right? This is what we do well,” she said.

    “But Donald Trump changed his rhetoric on mail-in voting and early voting, and people didn’t let this election go to waste – Republicans actually voted in this election and Democrats didn’t. This is simple math.

    Secretary of State data released Thursday morning 40,000 more Republicans than Democrats in Nevada for the general election even though Democrats outnumber Republicans in active voter registrations by 9,000.

    Message to Democrats: Go back to the drawing board

    With automatic voter registration at the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles and mailing universal ballots to voters, Magnus said it may be time for Democrats to update the way they do business .

    “Maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board and look at how we do turnout, how we poll, how we talk to voters, what we talk to voters about, and reevaluate how we do it . working in Nevada,” she said.

    Fred Lokken, a political science professor at Truckee Meadows Community College, agrees.

    “This is a huge wake-up call with a 2×4 in the back of the head for Democrats: They need to rethink all their strategies,” he said.

    “It was remarkable that the Republicans, without a game on the ground, got a strong voter registration program.”

    Numbers Show Nevada Leans More Right

    Lokken pointed to Washoe County — home to Reno — where Democrats had an advantage of about 200 people among active registered voters over Republicans in 2020. By 2024, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by nearly 9,000.

    At the state level, Republicans have gained about 78,000 points over Democrats over the past four years.

    With Trump leading Harris by 51,000 votes in Nevada’s unofficial results Thursday morning, the shift in voter registration is a major reason for his victory and the view that Nevada is becoming increasingly red.

    One of the reasons Lokken explains this is that Trump is appealing to people who are not traditionally Republican.

    “The Trump campaign has created a whole new base for the Republican Party,” he said. “They connected with blue-collar Latinos, black men and they got a strong union vote.”

    Could Republicans have made Nevada even redder?

    For Muth — who describes himself as a libertarian conservative — he thinks Republicans should have done much better than they did in Nevada and that Trump deserves credit for his performance here.

    “Trump won by himself,” Muth said of Nevada’s six electoral votes. “I have to give all the credit to Donald Trump for winning this race, and not to the ground game of the (Nevada) Republican Party. They’re going to end up trying to take too much credit, but that didn’t help. simply had no effect on the vote.”

    Although no winner has been declared, Democrat Jacky Rosen appears to retain her U.S. Senate seat with a narrow victory over Republican Sam Brown.

    All three Democratic incumbents in U.S. House seats were on track Thursday to win: Dina Titus, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford.

    Nearly all Democrats in tight races for the Nevada Legislature also appear to be up for re-election, like Steve Yeager and Nicole Cannizzaro in the South.

    In northern Nevada, Democrat Angie Taylor is poised to win a seat held by Republican Heidi Seevers O’Gara (formerly Gansert), who chose not to run again after the district was redrawn.

    Muth believes the Nevada Republican Party made a mistake in the February presidential preference primary by not beginning to engage low-propensity voters and implementing programs such as “Bank the Vote.” “Bank the Vote” was an effort by the Republican National Committee to encourage Republicans to lock in their votes as early as possible by taking advantage of early voting options in states like Nevada that offer mail-in ballots and the ability to vote in person on a machine. up to 15 days before election day.

    “They discouraged people from participating in the primary,” he said, “so they missed a big opportunity in February to test what they were doing and get it ready for the primary in June, and then to turn all the wheels like a well-oiled machine in November, and they didn’t do it.

    Mark Robison is the state politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal, with occasional forays into other topics. Send your comments by email to [email protected] or comment on Mark’s Grand Reno Facebook Page.

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