While Nevada has trended rightward the past few election cycles, 2024 could be the year the Silver States goes all-in for the GOP under the leadership of former President Donald Trump – and that’s bad news for Democrats.
According to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump currently has a 5.2-point advantage over President Joe Biden in Nevada. After Biden won the state by just over 30,000 votes in 2020, or about 2.4 percent, it was always expected to be a close race, but Trump has held a steady and comfortable polling lead since November 2023.
Nevada has not gone for a Republican in a presidential election since 2004, when George W. Bush eked out a victory with 50.5 percent of the vote. Obama easily carried the state in 2008 and 2012, winning by margins of 55.2 percent to 42.7 percent and 52.4 percent to 45.7 percent, respectively. Hillary Clinton won there by an almost identical margin to Joe Biden in 2016, 47.9 percent to 45.5 percent.
At the same time as Democrats were winning presidential elections there, Nevada also appeared to be trending leftward in Senate contests, with current incumbent Democrat Jackie Rosen ousting Republican Dean Heller in 2018. Nevada’s other U.S. Senate seat, currently held by Catherine Cortez-Masto, has been held by a Democrat since 1987, for most of that time by legendary Nevada lawmaker Harry Reid.
But the 2022 election marked the beginning of an alarming trend for Silver State Democrats. Incumbent Democrat Governor Steve Sisolak lost re-election to Republican Joe Lombardo, who had been endorsed by Trump. Republicans also won the lieutenant governorship and state controller post.
The one bright spot for Democrats was that Cortez-Masto survived a strong challenge from Republican Adam Laxalt – but just barely, winning by less than 8,000 votes. Her margin of victory of less than one percent was a marked decline from her 2.4 percent victory in 2016.
A major factor in Republicans’ resurgence was a relentless focus on Democrats’ COVID-19 lockdown policies. The GOP made an effective case that the state’s Democrat leadership kept the economy closed far longer than it needed to be, which led to economic catastrophe for the state. Nevada’s large number of service workers and reliance on tourism meant that it was hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic response and is only now beginning to recover.
Conversely, Democrats focused almost exclusively on abortion rights as the defining issue of their 2022 campaign. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, Sisolak accused Lombardo of wanting to ban abortions statewide. Lombardo was pro-life and hosted events with pro-life organizations, yet he pledged to respect the state’s 1990 ballot referendum establishing a middle ground on the issue. The attack fizzled, and Lombardo carried the day.
Like Lombardo, Trump has also made appeals to Nevada’s service workers, announcing at a June 9 rally in the state that, if elected, he will work to eliminate the tax on tips. As noted by the Associated Press, “Nevada has the highest concentration of tipped workers in the country, with about 25.8 waiters and waitresses per 1,000 jobs, followed by Hawaii and Florida.” The Biden campaign dismissed this pledge as a “stunt,” but Trump’s continued strong polling indicates Nevada service workers don’t see it that way.
The state’s large Hispanic population has also been a boon for Trump as the former president continues to make inroads with that demographic. Nevada ranks 5th among all U.S. states in per capita Hispanic population, at 28.7 percent. According to some polls, Trump is now leading Biden among Hispanic voters nationwide, a result that, if accurate, would represent a stunning turnaround after Biden won 60 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2020.
Those voters were particularly instrumental for Biden in Nevada and Arizona, and would prove just as important for Trump if he were able to win them this time around.
One other under-the-radar factor which may be helping Republicans in Nevada is the declining influence of the Democrat political machine built by the late Harry Reid.
Reid served in public office in Nevada from 1968 to 2017, rising through every level of government. Throughout that remarkably long tenure, he built a political operation that dominated the state, one that would come to be known as the “Reid Machine.”
As the AP noted after Reid’s death, his network of allies “helped pool resources to maximize support for candidates up and down the ballot” and “tapped into networks that extended well beyond the traditional party structure.” Particularly critical was his sway over the Culinary Union, which represents 60,000 workers.
But following Reid’s passing in 2021, the influence of his network has collapsed, allowing Republicans a fresh opportunity to compete in what is emerging as one of the most hotly contested battleground states in the country.
That increasingly appears to be bad news for Joe Biden, who had already been in the Senate 14 years by the time Reid got there in 1987. But the worst news may come on November 5, when Biden becomes the first Democrat in two decades to lose Nevada – and likely the presidency with it.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
