Democrats take early voting lead in Nevada going into Election Day

With early voting finished and tallied, registered Democrats in Nevada have taken a 46,000-vote lead over Republican voters heading into Election Day.

The lead is just a hair short of the 48,000-vote lead Democrats took into Election Day 2012. Democrat Barack Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney by 7 points statewide that year en route to winning his second term as president.

Early voting statistics are based on party affiliation, so the lead doesn’t mean presidential nominee Hillary Clinton or other Democrats on the ballot are necessarily ahead. However, in 2012, Obama won 92 percent of the Democrat vote, and Romney won 93 percent of the GOP vote.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump likely will have to perform exceptionally well with the 167,000 independent and third-party voters who voted early to overcome the GOP party vote deficit and defeat Clinton, UNLV political science professor David Damore said.

Friday proved to be a vigorous final day of early voting in Nevada. Polling locations across Southern Nevada stayed open past scheduled closing times to ensure all those standing in line could vote.

Nevada could serve as a proving ground to determine whether polling or early voting turnout serves as a better indicator for final election results. Recent polling has the race tightening. Some polls show Trump is significantly ahead in the wake of FBI Director James Comey announcing that the bureau had found more potentially classfied emails tied to the private server Clinton used during her time as secretary of state.

A CNN poll conducted between Oct. 27 and Nov. 1 showed Trump with a 6-point edge in Nevada. Those numbers are in stark contrast to previous polling, including a Review-Journal poll conducted from Oct. 20 to 23 that showed Clinton with a 7-point lead in Nevada. However, that poll was conducted before the FBI story broke.

Nevada’s down-ballot Republicans are hoping some dynamics from the 2012 election repeat in 2016.

Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., is running against Democrat and former state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto to replace U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a race that could decide the balance of power in the upper house of Congress.

Republican Sen. Dean Heller faced a similar party-vote margin in 2012 after early voting, but he went on to defeat Democrat Shelley Berkley by a single point, or roughly 12,000 votes.

Overall, about 767,000 Nevadans already have voted in this year’s general election, up about 9 percent compared with 2012. That’s about 52 percent of the state’s active registered voters.

In Clark County, 527,183 ballots have been cast in person or by mail so far, which means more than half of the county’s registered voters already have participated in this year’s election. Clark County Democrats are driving the party’s statewide advantage, out-voting county Republicans by 72,000 ballots.

That margin has ramifications in the 3rd and 4th Congressional Districts. Clark County residents make up 88 percent of the 4th District, where incumbent GOP Rep. Cresent Hardy is being challenged by Democratic state Sen. Ruben Kihuen. There are about 30,000 more registered Democrats in the 4th District than Republicans.

That margin is smaller in the 3rd District, where Heck is vacating his seat. Republican Danny Tarkanian faces Democrat Jacky Rosen in that district, which has 9,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans.

Contact Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.