Democrats win numbers game

Some of the new Democrats used to be Republicans.

Some of them used to be Californians.

Some of them weren't old enough or weren't citizens or just didn't see the point in voting before. But this year, they have registered as Democrats in droves in Nevada.

The shift has been dramatic. A state that for years had about equal numbers of registered Republicans and Democrats now has more than 93,000 more Democrats, according to data compiled last week by the secretary of state's office.

In 2004, when President Bush carried Nevada by 20,000 votes, there were 5,000 more Republicans than Democrats registered here.

How did the face of the electorate in this crucial swing state change so much so fast, and what does it mean?

Should Republicans, who have carried the state in every presidential election but two since 1964, give up any hope of taking the Silver State's five electoral votes?

With competitive races for Congress and the state Legislature, do the new numbers mean Democrats are poised to sweep into office at all levels?

"Is the election over (in Nevada)? No, but it certainly should scare the Republicans," said Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Reno.

"Even if the majority of these new registrants don't show up, even if you only get half of those people, you're talking about 40,000 new Democratic votes. Forty thousand Democratic votes would have made Al Gore president (in 2000). Heck, 20,000 Democratic votes would have made Al Gore president."

The new Democrats

April Hart, a 29-year-old school photographer who lives in Las Vegas, describes herself as "a born-and-raised Republican."

Her family is all Republicans, including three brothers in the military. But in January, she switched her voter registration to Democrat so that she could campaign and vote for Barack Obama in the Jan. 19 Nevada caucuses.

The reason was environmental issues.

"I think we need to put more money into hybrid cars and solar panels," Hart said. "We have 360 days of sun and five days of rain here in Las Vegas."

She believes Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, will take up the cause.

Plus, Hart said, she has soured on Republicans.

"I campaigned for Bush in 2000," she said. "To see what he's done the last eight years. ... The economy, it just bites."

Jaime Bedolla Anguiano, 51, and his wife, Carmen Bedolla, 50, are Mexican immigrants who moved to Nevada from California three years ago because there were jobs here. A year ago, they became U.S. citizens, and this year they plan to vote Democratic.

He believes Obama will stop the war in Iraq and reform immigration, while she says the Democrats will improve the economy.

"With this president, the economy is down to the floor," Carmen Bedolla said.

Roland Javier, 53, registered to vote for the first time at the Meadows mall on a recent Saturday. A retired Navy man, he and his wife squeezed together on a single chair to fill out their forms at a registration table operated by the Clark County Election Department.

"The issues are just more important this time," he said. "It's like, gosh, there's a crisis going on. We feel like voting this time."

Since the 2004 election, nearly 90,000 additional Democrats have signed up in Nevada. Over the same time period, Republicans actually have declined in number statewide, even as the total number of voters has increased.

More than 9,000 Republican voters have fallen off the state's voter rolls since 2004.

Analysts say several factors are behind the Democratic registration trend in Nevada.

(They do not believe it is because of the alleged registration fraud on the part of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, currently being investigated by state and federal authorities.)

The Democratic Party, both locally and nationally, is better organized and better funded than the GOP this year. Democrats had a very competitive race for the January caucuses that drove both Obama and rival Hillary Clinton to recruit new voters and volunteers, while Republican candidates largely ignored the state in the primaries.

"The Democrats made a conscious effort to get more people registered, and they did it effectively," Herzik said. "The early caucus helped them get started, and then the very dedicated, very organized grass-roots campaign of Barack Obama has gotten a lot of people engaged who were not engaged before."

There's also the matter of changing demographics.

As Nevada continues to grow, it is Clark County, always the state's urban Democratic stronghold, that gains population, while the overwhelmingly Republican rural counties account for less and less of the populace.

The transplants, whether from liberal California or the declining industrial Midwest, might lean Democratic.

Hispanics also account for a growing percentage of the electorate. And although Republican John McCain has tried to court them, local and national polls show that in the current election they heavily favor Obama and the Democrats.

Most of all, say Democrats, the mood of the electorate has turned.

"The American public, the American voters are frustrated," said Billy Vassiliadis, the longtime Nevada Democratic consultant and an early Obama backer. "They're angry. They're scared. And they see that we've been heading down the wrong path, that our leadership, the president, et cetera, have done nothing to avert this disaster."

Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, McCain's campaign chairman for the state, acknowledged that Democrats have deployed "prolific" resources here. In Northern Nevada, he said, "I have been solicited in front of the grocery store by volunteers from California."

Krolicki said Democrats are benefiting from "years of pent-up frustration, whether it's the economy or the war in Iraq. It's mobilized folks in an unusually energetic way. But it just means those who feel that way are more organized. That doesn't necessarily translate to a majority on Nov. 4."

Dimensions of a trend

The Democrats' voter registration gains in Nevada have occurred almost entirely in the past year.

As of March 2007, Republicans had the edge, barely: There were about 200 more Republicans than Democrats, according to statewide statistics kept by the secretary of state's office.

The advantage was the Democrats' a month later by a couple hundred registrations.

In the fall, when the Democratic presidential primary began to heat up, Democrats began to pull away and leave Republicans in the dust.

During the past 12 months, the graph of registration numbers for the two parties yawns like a crocodile's open mouth. The two lines start in the same place, but the Democratic numbers climb steadily up while the number of Republicans remains basically flat.

The effect can be seen all over the state. Clark County has nearly 120,000 more Democrats than Republicans, as opposed to 43,000 in 2004.

In Washoe County, a Republican advantage that stood at 17,500 four years ago is now down to just 105.

And in rural Nevada, the 15 counties that make up less than 15 percent of the state's population but an important and reliable base for the Republicans, the GOP's advantage, still pronounced, has declined, from 30,200 to 25,500.

The numbers have the potential to affect not just the presidential election but the re-election bids of some prominent Republican incumbents, most notably Rep. Jon Porter.

In 2006, a year when Democrats took the majority of both houses of Congress in a nationwide sweep, Porter pulled off a victory by less than 4,000 votes in the 3rd Congressional District, which includes mostly suburban parts of Clark County. At the time, the district had 2,000 more Democrats than Republicans.

Now, there are more than 30,000 more Democrats than Republicans in the 3rd Congressional District.

Rep. Dean Heller's 2nd Congressional District covers all 16 counties of rural and Northern Nevada, plus a small chunk of Clark County. Before Heller was elected in 2006, the seat was held by now-Gov. Jim Gibbons.

When Heller beat Democrat Jill Derby that time, by less than 13,000 votes, there were 48,000 more Republicans than Democrats in the district.

Democrats still lag far behind and Heller now has the advantage of incumbency, but the gap has been cut to 26,000.

Another crucial battle for Republicans this election is to keep their narrow edge in the state Senate, which they control by a margin of 11 seats to 10. But two Clark County incumbents face an upside-down electorate compared to their last electoral tests four years ago.

The Henderson district of state Sen. Joe Heck was 42 percent Republican, 38 percent Democrat; now it's 41 percent Democrat, 39 percent Republican.

The Summerlin district of state Sen. Bob Beers was 44 percent Republican, 39 percent Democrat; now it's 42 percent Democrat, 40 percent Republican.

WHAT IT MEANS

Nobody -- not Republicans, not Democrats, not independent analysts -- is saying the 2008 election is over in Nevada.

Elections don't depend on who registers; they depend on who votes, and for which candidate.

"It's quality over quantity (of voters) as far as we're concerned. We fully expect our voters to turn out on Election Day, and we expect John McCain to do well with independents and Democrats," said Zac Moyle, executive director of the Nevada Republican Party.

"We are frustrated to be down this much (in the registration statistics). The layout of the state seems to have changed in terms of registration. But we'll have to see what happens on Election Day. That's what it's all about."

In past elections in Nevada, Republicans have been more successful at turning out their voters than Democrats. They've also been relatively successful at getting conservative Democrats to cross party lines.

Many of the categories of voters that tend to favor Democrats also are historically less likely to turn out to vote: young voters, first-time voters, Hispanic voters, Clark County voters.

Meanwhile, 20 percent of voters are registered nonpartisan or with a third party.

Neither party can win simply by turning out its base. And even if the state goes for Obama at the top of the ticket, races further down the ballot may hinge on the particular candidates who are competing.

"I still think Nevada has a habit of voting for an individual, not a party," said Krolicki, the Republican lieutenant governor. "That's reflected in the number of registered independents. They will decide who will be the winning candidate in Nevada."

Herzik said the more successful Democrats are at turning out all those new registrants, the more likely it is their candidates at other levels will be able to ride the wave.

"If the only reason they show up to vote is that they're excited about Barack Obama, as long as they're there, they'll go down the ballot and keep voting," Herzik said. "If they don't know the candidates, the cue they will use (to decide who to vote for) is party label. It's Political Science 101."

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball @reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.