Nonpartisans key in the 2024 election, data shows

More than 1 million Nevadans — just over half the state’s total registered voters — have already cast their vote in the 2024 election after early voting wrapped up Friday night. Early voting turnout suggests the race will be close, but higher than usual Republican participation means Democrats must play catch-up on getting out the vote, a reversal of previous election cycles.

Turnout so far also shows nonpartisan voters could be the ones to decide who wins Nevada’s electoral votes, experts say.

Of the 1,048,389 Nevadans who voted as of Friday night, whether it was through mail ballots, the state’s online early voting program or in-person early voting, 398,868 were Republicans, 353,766 were Democrats and 295,755 were either nonpartisan or with another party.

Republicans have a numerical lead going into the final days of mail voting before Election Day, but it’s unknown which candidate nonpartisan voters favor and whether Democrats or Republicans stuck with their party’s candidates. The bottom line is, the numbers so far don’t indicate a sweep for either side.

“It’s going to be a close race,” said UNLV political science professor Dan Lee.

Republicans lead in early voting

“The big surprise, obviously, is the GOP turnout in early (voting),” said UNLV political science professor David Damore, executive director of The Lincy Institute and Brookings Mountain West.

Republicans have changed their get-out-the-vote strategy to encourage supporters to vote with any method Nevada has available, whether it’s early voting, in-person on Election Day or with a mail ballot.

“That’s very, very interesting, after years and years and years of wondering why the Republicans weren’t embracing early voting and now they are,” Damore said.

In previous years, the GOP was the one trying to play catch-up on Election Day, and now it’s the Democrats trying to do that as well as getting their voters to vote by mail, he said.

Republican strategist Jeremy Hughes said the voting turnout numbers show a “total inverse for how elections have occurred in Nevada” over the last decade.

“Republicans have never sat in the cat-bird seat” coming out of the end of early voting, he said.

In past cycles, Republicans had to pitch a perfect game to win key seats going into Election Day, Hughes said.

“Now, it’s flipped. Democrats are the ones behind,” he said.

It’s possible there’s defection among Republicans who are voting for Harris or for the “none of the above” option rather than Trump, said Damore, but it’s unclear to what degree that is happening. Another big question is whether the Democratic “Reid Machine” gets their voters to turn out and vote, Damore said, adding the Democratic campaigns haven’t had strong messaging on voting by mail this cycle.

The lead Republicans have in early voting could create another “red mirage” that was seen in previous cycles, however, Damore said.

Democrats tend to vote more by mail, and mail ballots will likely be delayed in coming in, he said. Republicans will probably be up in the first batch of results before Democrats’ mail ballots roll in, which plays into a narrative of a stolen election, Damore said.

That could change this cycle, he said. Local counties have already begun processing mail ballots, which means more votes released in that first batch, he said.

Lee said not much can be gathered from the numbers right now. Republicans will have an advantage with any in-person voting, he said, while Democrats will continue having an advantage with mail ballot votingd.

Lee said the big question is: Which way are nonpartisan voters going to break?

“That’s the deciding thing for the election,” Lee said. “You just can’t tell. It’s kind of like this black box of voters.”

Nonpartisans the key

In the 2022 midterms, nonpartisan voters made up 30 percent of registrants but 20 percent of the turnout, Damore said. So far, those voters account for 28 percent of the early voting and mail ballot turnout so far.

No one knows which way that big chunk of voters is actually going, Lee said. Will it be those voters who are dissatisfied with the status quo and how the economy is going, so they’ll vote for Trump? Or is it those suburban voters who haven’t gone along with the election conspiracy theories and are concerned about abortion and will swing toward Harris?

“Which side is going to win out?” Lee said.

Hughes does not think the nonpartisan voter bloc will break hard one way or the other in a large percent. He thinks they’ll behave similarly to 2022 where they picked and chose a lot of the races.

He also thinks Nevada has entered a new era when it comes to split ticket voting, and he expects there will be some split-ticket voting similarly to what was seen with voters choosing both Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in 2022.

“These nonpartisans will end up picking the winners in a lot of the races,” Hughes said.

Parties feeling confident

Both parties feel confident nonpartisan voters are breaking toward them.

“As we’ve said all along, this election will be close,” said Nevada State Democratic Party spokesperson Nicholas Simões Machado in a statement. “We know nonpartisan voters will play a major role in deciding this election, which is why we invested early in a ground game focused on both turning out Democrats and earning support from nonpartisans and moderate Republicans.”

Democrats have been focused on reaching nonpartisan voters and making sure they mobilize the “broad and diverse coalition we need to win statewide,” Machado said.

Halee Dobbins, Nevada communications director for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that Nevada Republicans continue outpacing Democrats in early voting because Trump’s “winning message is resonating with Nevadans.”

“Voters are embracing President Trump’s message to vote early and are eagerly heading to the polls,” she said in a statement. “Nevadans want commonsense and are ready for a return to strength and prosperity under President Trump and JD Vance.”

Early voting surged Friday

Early voting wrapped up Friday with a surge of voters casting ballots statewide, with nearly 69,000 voters taking part, surpassing the previous day's total by nearly by more than 25,000 voters, according to the Nevada secretary of state data.

Nearly 50,000 of Friday's early voters cast ballots in Clark County.

A half hour before many early voting sites were set to close Friday night, several polling locations across the valley had projected line wait times exceeding 50 minutes. At the Galleria Mall in Henderson, people expected to wait for an hour and 40 minutes.

By 8:30 p.m., the projected wait grew to two hours.

Kendra Pfaltzgraf, 24, said she waited in line at the Galleria Mall for nearly three hours.

"I figured that the lines would be even worse on Election Day," said Pfaltzgraf, who is a law student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. "But I like voting in person. It is nice to see so many people excited about democracy."

—Akiya Dillon