NV-SEN 2022: Roll the Dice

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

I’ve barely stepped foot in my home state since 2020 so I’m not as familiar with anecdotes but I’d like to see evidence of hospitality dependent areas shifting R’s in other states before I blame the Nevada results on the pandemic. Possible the Hispanics or WWC are continuing to shift R relative to 2018/2020 and it won’t just snap back easily.

Curious what if any shift there was among Filipinos, they're the largest Asian group (by a significant margin!) in NV. Wonder if there's also data for HI transplants, Vegas isn't called "The 9th Island" for nothing.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/nevada-1-5-states-10-asian-americans-both-parties-courted-vote-dems-wo-rcna57959

In House, Senate and gubernatorial races, the electorate favored Democratic candidates, preliminary exit poll results from the Asian American Legal and Defense Fund (AALDEF) show. Polling, however, is done in primarily urban areas and may capture fewer conservative, suburban and rural voters, Jerry Vattamala, the director of the democracy program at AALDEF, said.

But even in tight races, the group’s influence, experts say, isn’t to be discounted. In the 3rd Congressional District, where Democrat Rep. Susie Lee won by just over 1,700 votes, Asian Americans provided the margin of victory, supporting her at 47%, according to an election eve poll conducted by the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund. Another 43% supported GOP candidate April Becker.  

”Most people know now that if you want to have the Asian American community turnout, you need to reach out to them through that kind of microcosm of Chinese American outings, making sure that you reach out to the Vietnamese American community,” Koo said. “There are gathering spaces for Asian Americans, but so often, it’s really broken down by ethnicity.”

But Vattamala said that Democrats were likely able to break through, in part because of the local community’s policy priorities. According to his group’s exit poll, health care emerged as the top issue for voters and is one that tends to pull people left, he said.

Vattamala similarly said that while many Nevada survey respondents said economy and jobs were also a top issue for them in this election, it’s likely that voters are thinking of that issue in terms of minimum wage and union support.

Experts also noted that previous surveys show that the general Asian Americans population identifies slightly left of center. Though the electorate showed a similar preference for Democratic candidates in the last midterm election, experts say the loyalty may have more to do with the nature of the candidates themselves. Democratic candidates in Nevada, who are often more moderate than those on the coasts, may naturally align more with the Asian American community. Lee, for example, is considered a moderate House Democrat.

Re: NV-03 poll- this is a pretty narrow margin of victory among Asian voters. The non-closeness of the final margin makes me guess undecided Asians broke for the incumbent.

NV-03: With 78% of the vote counted, Democratic incumbent Susie Lee leads Republican challenger April Becker 50.4% to 49.6%, a difference of just 1,702 votes. According to the Fund’s election eve poll, Asian American voters supported Lee 47% to 43%. There are an estimated 82,290 citizen, voting-age Asian Americans in NV-03, or 14% of the citizen adult population.

[wbrocks67]

You seem to be implying that we should take Ralston's word as gospel and immediately declare Masto the winner in Nevada.

What an interesting thing to read into my post! Let me help you out - you are mistaken.

I am not. People on here are reacting precisely as I would have expected. We might as well call the election as over now and say that Democrats have the Senate and possibly the House as well. Republicans are going to significantly underperform tomorrow, and are going to be rejected by voters because of 1/6, Trump, and Dobbs. That's what people on here firmly and sincerely believe.

I have a question, by which I mean as little offense as I can: do you think you could possibly make an argument in worse faith?

It is not in bad faith. Many of the people on this forum consistently overstate Democratic prospects and think we are on the brink of a "blue wave" or a "Dobbs backlash" tomorrow. And many of the people on this forum believe that everything is going absolutely fine, that Biden is a great President, and that it is necessary to stop Republicans from winning, lest democracy be destroyed.

bloop!

[wbrocks67]

You seem to be implying that we should take Ralston's word as gospel and immediately declare Masto the winner in Nevada.

What an interesting thing to read into my post! Let me help you out - you are mistaken.

I am not. People on here are reacting precisely as I would have expected. We might as well call the election as over now and say that Democrats have the Senate and possibly the House as well. Republicans are going to significantly underperform tomorrow, and are going to be rejected by voters because of 1/6, Trump, and Dobbs. That's what people on here firmly and sincerely believe.

and bloop again!

(sorry, I just can't help it)

[ProgressiveModerate]

I think one mistake Laxalt made that I pointed out earlier in this thread is he seemed to run a very rural-centric campaign in a state that is almost entirely urban. 70% of Nevadans live in the Las Vegas metro, as due about 60% of Republican votes in a normal election these days.

The sense I got is that Laxalt really didn't make a proactive effort to go into Las Vegas and connect with a lot of these voters where they were at, specifically Independents who may dislike some R rhetoric/vote D by default but were unhappy with the economy. Masto on the other hand ran a very Las-Vegas centered campaign, using the abortion message strongly as Las Vegas is a very pro-choice city. I think she also connected with a lot of the working-class people, many of whom have ties to the casino industry in some way, and was able to distance herself from stuff like COVID closures.

Rs really need to put more effort into Las Vegas going forwards if they want to win statewide in NV.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

I think one mistake Laxalt made that I pointed out earlier in this thread is he seemed to run a very rural-centric campaign in a state that is almost entirely urban. 70% of Nevadans live in the Las Vegas metro, as due about 60% of Republican votes in a normal election these days.

The sense I got is that Laxalt really didn't make a proactive effort to go into Las Vegas and connect with a lot of these voters where they were at, specifically Independents who may dislike some R rhetoric/vote D by default but were unhappy with the economy. Masto on the other hand ran a very Las-Vegas centered campaign, using the abortion message strongly as Las Vegas is a very pro-choice city. I think she also connected with a lot of the working-class people, many of whom have ties to the casino industry in some way, and was able to distance herself from stuff like COVID closures.

Rs really need to put more effort into Las Vegas going forwards if they want to win statewide in NV.

It looks like Masto held on with enough hispanic voters to pull her across. Also in some rural areas Laxalt ran behind Trump, and while these counties only have a few thousand votes every little bit matters in Nevada. But honestly its not even Clark thats the problem for Republicans in Nevada-its Washoe. It seems to be trending D which is bad for Rs because now they need to continue to make Clark county closer.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think one mistake Laxalt made that I pointed out earlier in this thread is he seemed to run a very rural-centric campaign in a state that is almost entirely urban. 70% of Nevadans live in the Las Vegas metro, as due about 60% of Republican votes in a normal election these days.

The sense I got is that Laxalt really didn't make a proactive effort to go into Las Vegas and connect with a lot of these voters where they were at, specifically Independents who may dislike some R rhetoric/vote D by default but were unhappy with the economy. Masto on the other hand ran a very Las-Vegas centered campaign, using the abortion message strongly as Las Vegas is a very pro-choice city. I think she also connected with a lot of the working-class people, many of whom have ties to the casino industry in some way, and was able to distance herself from stuff like COVID closures.

Rs really need to put more effort into Las Vegas going forwards if they want to win statewide in NV.

That's not really borne out in the voting patterns, though. CCM's winning margin in Clark is actually surprisingly weak for a candidate who won statewide: she won it by less than 8 points, actually one point less than Shelley Berkeley who went on to lose to Heller in 2012. Clark was just 7 points to the left of the state, the same as in the 2020 presidential election but lower than any previous Senate election since the days of John Ensign. And actually, Sisolak's overperformance in Clark was slightly higher than CCM's - he did 7.2 points better while she did almost exactly 7.

Of course, you can always argue that she would have done worse if she hadn't spent so much time organizing in Clark, and I totally agree. But relative to other recent elections, what really made the difference for CCM was how well she did in Washoe (she did better there than Rosen in 2018) and perhaps also lower rural turnout (at least that's my guess - I'm too lazy to crunch the numbers there).

[Spectator]

Yeah, CCM’s win is almost entirely attributable to the growing Dem strength in Washoe. Her entire statewide margin came from there.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

Yeah, CCM’s win is almost entirely attributable to the growing Dem strength in Washoe. Her entire statewide margin came from there.

https://mobile.twitter.com/zach_solomon1/status/1598452031387488257

CCM's margin in Clark wasn't enough to counter the Rural counties this time making this one of the first democratic victories where Dems relied on putting up margins in Washoe, perhaps a look into the future.

[wbrocks67]

You seem to be implying that we should take Ralston's word as gospel and immediately declare Masto the winner in Nevada.

What an interesting thing to read into my post! Let me help you out - you are mistaken.

I am not. People on here are reacting precisely as I would have expected. We might as well call the election as over now and say that Democrats have the Senate and possibly the House as well. Republicans are going to significantly underperform tomorrow, and are going to be rejected by voters because of 1/6, Trump, and Dobbs. That's what people on here firmly and sincerely believe.

And I oop!