Early & Absentee Voting Megathread - Build the Freiwal

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We finally have some numbers, including Washoe. Looks like Democrats won the in person vote by 14 votes, while Republicans won absentees by 69 votes, so they're definitely not ahead in Washoe. Democrats now lead by about 650 votes overall in Washoe. Looks like turnout went down across the state, not just in Clark, so Democrats probably gain a couple hundred votes statewide today.

By my imprecise math, Democrats are ahead by about 13.2K statewide, 33.2K in Clark.

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While Ralston is still calling NV-SEN and NV-GOV Toss-Ups, he is saying that if Heller isn't winning Independents, he might be done for. If Clark turnout is strong today and tomorrow, I'm pretty sure he'll predict that Rosen and Sisolak will win, though he'll probably say that it'll be narrow.

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Looks like Clark is staying steady over a historical jump https://mobile.twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1058138108686827520

The jump usually happens to its biggest extent on Friday, but it looks like turnout will definitely be higher than yesterday. On other days when it's been at 17K at 3 PM, it's almost always gotten above 25K, and sometimes been close to 30K.

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I want Democrats to put this race away. They are clearly not doing that. We'll have to rely on the independents to actually win this, and I don't want to bet on independents.

Sorry, but there's always going to be some uncertainty. Democrats are always going to need some Independents, just like Republicans need some (Republicans need to win more of them in Nevada than Democrats.) If you want elections to be determined only by intelligent, rational people, I suggest looking at other countries.

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If you want elections to be determined only by intelligent, rational people, I suggest looking at other countries.

lol, which ones? I've been following elections around the world for almost a decade and haven't seen much rationality.

Touche, but at least some countries seem to have a little more common sense than this country, thus why we don't have President Hofer or Le Pen, for example. Point is, we're always going to need to win some "Independents" to vote Democratic for Democrats to win in this country. The thing is, though, even if Heller is winning Independents by 10 (lol), he's still behind, and all indications are that Democrats are going to win Independents, by and large.

I'd still say that 40K is doable in Clark. If Democrats have a decent day, they should get to 36K, and then if turnout is high and they get a good margin, 4K is certainly possible on Friday, especially when you add absentees.

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Point is, we're always going to need to win some "Independents" to vote Democratic for Democrats to win in this country. The thing is, though, even if Heller is winning Independents by 10 (lol), he's still behind, and all indications are that Democrats are going to win Independents, by and large.

All assumptions about how independents will vote are pure speculation at this point. We don't have any reliable data (the polls' subsamples are way too small to yield reliable estimate). So yeah, sure, maybe independents are voting for Rosen massively, or maybe they aren't, we just don't know.

But no, if Heller is winning big with independents, he almost certainly will win the election. He might be under now, but keep in mind that based on past elections the ED vote will be significantly more Republican than the EV.

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We'll find out soon enough. We'd definitely need at least 3K today and 4K tomorrow to get there. And even then, 40K is only a partial insurance. I was hoping for something a little above that just for extra safety.

Well, as I've said, if Heller wins (and Independents vote Republican), there's no blue wave, and we're probably headed for a bad night. But based on what we've seen since 2016, there's more reason to believe that they'll lean Democratic. Heller winning big among Independents, while not impossible, is highly unlikely.

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Wow, if they got 4K today, they might get 5K or even more tomorrow, when turnout is even higher. 43K might be possible once absentees are counted. One caveat is that rural turnout was higher, and Republicans gained a little more than 1K based on rurals, but the remaining counties won't come close to off-setting a 4.2K gain in Clark. A 15+K statewide lead looks likely, and 40+K looks pretty much inevitable in Clark. Called it.

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Assuming turnout is high tomorrow and Democrats get a good margin, 42-43K is definitely possible. 45K is probably not, but considering that Ralston thought their freiwal would be between 30 and 35K at the beginning of the week, it's clear how things have trended.

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Democrats netted about another 350 votes from Clark absentees, so the freiwal is at nearly 38K. Statewide lead is a little above 15K, it'll probably be a little under once Lyon comes in, but Democrats are definitely going to be well over a 15K lead after tonight, and the Clark freiwal probably gets to at least 42K tonight, if not more.

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https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1058430087844945920

Looks like the freiwal's gonna get 10 feet taller today.

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https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1058481174501195776

Holy cow, Clark turnout could hit 40K today.

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https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1058513670982922241

Clark already hit 35K. Looks like it will top 40K, could it reach 45K?

If it does, and Democrats get a strong margin, the freiwal could come close to or hit 45K, and Democrats could come close to a statewide lead of 20K.

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It's gonna be a while before we get the numbers, but if turnout gets about 50K, the freiwal could easily get to or even pass 45K in Clark, which would mean that Democrats could be up by around 20K statewide. Well, IceSpear, MTTreasurer, ON Progressive, ZayBay et al., should we start getting the eggs ready?

Turnout on the last day of 2016 was 57K, btw.

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Some rurals just came in, and took about 1.7K off the Democratic margin. Turnout was up (except in Lyon, where it went way down), and Elko is still out, but given that the Democratic margin statewide is about 12.8K by my calculations, if they get a robust margin in Clark and a tie in Washoe, there's a chance that their statewide lead could get over 20K.

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Washoe dropped, 13,187 votes today...about 55k total. Dems lead looks to be 1141 right now.

The means Democrats won Washoe overall by about 1.8K, or 1.4%.

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So the Clark freiwal is over 47K, and 40K was supposed to be enough to make Republicans sweat. The statewide lead is currently over 23K (will probably drop just under once all the rurals are in), and 15K was the goal for Democrats... While that's technically not insurtmountable for Republicans, they would need the same kind of margin in raw numbers (not %) that they got on ED, as well as a hefty lead among Independents to just barely scrape by.

I'd say it's more likely that, once again, the polls were off in Nevada, and we get Senator Rosen and Governor Sisolak, and their races won't be nail-biters either...

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So the Clark freiwal is over 47K, and 40K was supposed to be enough to make Republicans sweat. The statewide lead is currently over 23K (will probably drop just under once all the rurals are in), and 15K was the goal for Democrats... While that's technically not insurtmountable for Republicans, they would need the same kind of margin in raw numbers (not %) that they got on ED, as well as a hefty lead among Independents to just barely scrape by.

I'd say it's more likely that, once again, the polls were off in Nevada, and we get Senator Rosen and Governor Sisolak, and their races won't be nail-biters either...

Uh that’s not quite accurate. 22k statewide is a strong lead, but in 2016 the EV lead was 47k. Obviously Dems won by about 25k in the senate race in the end, meaning that between winning Indy’s and ED Rs gained 22k. If you assume 80% turnout then that’s a 18k gain, which would indicate Dems winning by 4K statewide if 2018 follows 2016 patterns exactly.

So in other words, a 2016 performance would yield toss-up / tilt D races. Of course, 2018 is not 2016 and Ds seem primed to do better on ED than they have in the past, perhaps battling it to a near draw. Additionally, Ds should do better with Indys than they did two years ago.

In other words, it’s a Lean D race in both the senate and governors races, but it’s not likely or safe based on these numbers. It is in fact a worse showing than Ds had in 2016 early voting, though only by a bit. Dems definitely turned up the heat a lot yesterday though - without that Clark performance things were going to look more like a pure tossup.

The thing is, in 2016, everything went the Trump's/Heck's way on ED, and it still wasn't enough. And while if everything goes Heller's/Laxalt's way on ED this year, that would make it an ever closer call, it probably still wouldn't be enough. That shows just how dire things are for the Republicans right now.

FWIW, Ralston, who has described both races as Toss-Ups all year, is now leaning them toward the Democrats, and he's usually very careful about putting races in the Lean/Likely column.