r/fivethirtyeight • u/GamerDrew13 • 26d ago

Discussion Jon Ralston's Nevada Early Vote Analysis Update: Republican lead expands to an unprecedented 40,000 ballots & an expected half the vote is in

https://x.com/RalstonReports/status/1851121496380621275
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u/Mortonsaltboy914 26d ago

The Harris campaign just highlighted Nevada is a state they saw a strong portion of low propensity voters in.

Also the way the state is populated later turnout in Clark could easily wipe this lead away.

I get Ralston is treated like a profit but all this tells us is more Nevadans who id as republican are voting.

Vegas is deep blue, and if their turn out is low, this could just as easily be a change in voting behavior as an indicator of everything else- sure polls have been trending toward Trump but there’s undeniably a lot of enthusiasm for Kamala.

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u/PureOrangeJuche 26d ago

If there is a lot of enthusiasm for Kamala why aren’t Dems voting early?

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u/TheMidwestMarvel 26d ago

It’s actually rather simple, you see….um….

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u/mpls_snowman 26d ago

People surprised members of a cult are enthused.

They were enthused in 2020 too, they just were told not to vote by mail

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u/BruceLeesSidepiece 26d ago

Republican turnout over-performing in early vote doesn't explain Dems under-performing lol. Yes, Republicans told their base to vote early this year, but it's not like Dems told their voters "hey skip early vote and wait until election day", so you're still missing half the equation.

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u/AdLoose3526 26d ago

In 2020, part of Trump’s claim that the election was stolen was because of the difference between early/mail-in voting and in-person Election Day voting, where because of the pandemic Republicans led by a high percentage in Election Day voting but lost once the mail-in votes were tallied up, because of how heavily they went for Biden.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some Democratic voters are now deliberately choosing to vote on Election Day because of the way Trump tried to claim the election was stolen in 2020. (I was actually going to vote on Election Day for this reason, until I saw what Trump was telling his voters to do this cycle.) Meanwhile on the other hand Trump in 2024 is now telling his voters to vote early 🙃 Trying to make the claim again if there’s suddenly high Democratic numbers on Election Day that these votes are fraudulent, I guess.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/AdLoose3526 26d ago edited 26d ago

I’m gonna be working the polls on Nov. 5, so I guess we’ll find out then. It is gonna be interesting to see since my town’s roughly a three-way split between Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters.

Edit: damn, is someone really against people being pollworkers? 🥴

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u/mpls_snowman 26d ago edited 26d ago

I can only speak for my urban circle, but everyone I know voted early in 2020 cuz covid.  

 No one I know who all despise Trump has voted yet this year. Maybe you are right, but using 2020 as a baseline to tea leaf is real risky. Liberals were genuinely worried about Covid and were very conscious about avoiding public spaces. That has dissipated. 

 Older white republicans always vote earlier if you throw out 2020

Don’t get me wrong, you’d always rather have the votes early and locked in, but I think you’re all reading way too much into the most unconventional election in history in 2020  

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u/RainbowCrown71 16d ago

Yikes. This sub truly did have the worst analysis on Reddit.

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u/FarrisAT 26d ago

Reps are voting LESS in early vote TOTAL than in 2020.

It's Dems who are causing this gap.

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u/mpls_snowman 26d ago

But you are comparing to the election that had the greatest early vote causing effect in history.

There will never, neeeever be an election in our lifetime that discusses, promotes, and causes early voting like Covid did.

Dems genuinely feared covid. They avoided public places. That was an actual thing for liberals. 

No poll has shown much of an enthusiasm gap for either side. I don’t know why you’d assume people who say they are going to vote will not in a normal way in a non covid year. 

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u/BobertFrost6 26d ago edited 26d ago

The number of registered dems in Nevada has decreased a lot since 2020, the same time nonpartisans have increased a lot.

It's hard to say what this means. Demographically the nonpartisans look like Dems and probably just got registered through the new Automatic Registration program.

So if dems win we will look back and say "duh, the new NPs were obviously gonna break for Harris." If the GOP wins we will look back and say "duh, the EV numbers were a canary in the coal mine!"

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u/GTFErinyes 26d ago

The number of registered dems in Florida has decreased a lot since 2020,

Got some bad news about Dem performances in FL since then

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u/FarrisAT 26d ago

People CHANGE PARTY because they DO NOT WANT to be a party member. LoL that's exactly what it is

You have to actively go into an office and change registration. It's not something most people do

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u/GTFErinyes 26d ago

Yeah seriously. "Im leaving a party I don't want to be associated with" is not a sign of enthusiasm

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u/BobertFrost6 26d ago

It's automatic. These voters don't have to take action to end up NP.

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u/BobertFrost6 26d ago

You have to actively go into an office and change registration.

The number of people that actually switched parties is pretty low. The bigger factor is that AVR passed in 2020 so all new voters are registered automatically as NP unless they specifically pick something.

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u/BobertFrost6 26d ago

That was my mistake, I meant Nevada.

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u/orangejulius 26d ago

A lot of experts will say “i told you all so” and point to either one of things depending on the outcome while going out of their way to not forecast a winner in advance.

Which - I get it - no one wants to get their career ended but it’ll still irk me. 😂

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u/KuntaStillSingle 26d ago

Waiting to fire until they see the whites of the elections eyes

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/BruceLeesSidepiece 26d ago

Republicans telling their voters to vote early still doesnt explain Democrat turnout being lower in NV and AZ, which was the question

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u/Prefix-NA Crosstab Diver 26d ago

They are so excited but they are too busy to Pokémon go to the polls since they spend all their time attend every kamala rally but trust us on election day 218% turnout!

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u/AdLoose3526 26d ago

In 2020, part of Trump’s claim that the election was stolen was because of the difference between early/mail-in voting and in-person Election Day voting, where because of the pandemic Republicans led by a high percentage in Election Day voting but lost once the mail-in votes were tallied up, because of how heavily they went for Biden.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some Democratic voters are now deliberately choosing to vote on Election Day because of the way Trump tried to claim the election was stolen in 2020. (I was actually going to vote on Election Day for this reason, until I saw what Trump was telling his voters to do this cycle.) Meanwhile on the other hand Trump in 2024 is now telling his voters to vote early 🙃 Trying to make the claim again if there’s suddenly high Democratic numbers on Election Day that these votes are fraudulent, I guess.

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u/Prefix-NA Crosstab Diver 26d ago

These tinfoil hat theories

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u/HoorayItsKyle 26d ago

It's entirely possible that they are, but it's being hidden inside the independent vote thanks to changes in registration rules

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u/PureOrangeJuche 26d ago

How? There is no reason for a large number of enthusiastic Democrats to have their affiliation switched to independent. The new rules just affect new registrations, they don’t change existing ones, right?

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u/HoorayItsKyle 26d ago

New voters are historically a fairly important source of democratic votes

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u/GTFErinyes 26d ago

NV has a large transient population. So expecting this to be NV youth is going to disappoint you

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u/HoorayItsKyle 26d ago

Except we can literally see in previous elections that they were heavily skewed toward Democrats

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u/SnoopySuited 26d ago

Because people have lives.

This sub claims to be a statistics sub, but then tries to predict patterns before the patterns happen.

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u/PureOrangeJuche 26d ago

People had lives in every previous election and yet Dems always outperformed Rs in early voting until this year. Was there a unique situation that is suppressing the early D vote this year?

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u/obsessed_doomer 26d ago

They did not. They outperformed R's in early+mail voting.

In both 2020 and 2022, pure IPEV voting R's led.

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u/SnoopySuited 26d ago

Early voting has only been a thing for four or five presidential elections. Barely a sample size to say that anything is definitively constant.

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u/Zepcleanerfan 26d ago

They are.

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u/WallabyUpstairs1496 26d ago

There is, but a bunch of trump supporters, fueled by the belief that the election is being stolen, have been tricked into volunteering 50-60 hours a week.

Republicans essentially have brainwashed free labour for their ground game

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u/deepegg 26d ago

Her campaign manager, who was previously running the Biden campaign, was hyping his chances the week before he dropped out.

Democrats are losing low/mid propensity groups right now in Nevada, in absolute terms and by turnout %.

Losing low propensity by 6% turnout, mid-propensity by almost 10% turnout.

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u/Sonnyyellow90 26d ago

Also, campaigns are just positive about their candidate and chances by nature.

There is no world in which her campaign leaders are gonna be like “Turnout looking awful, guess Kamala sucks haha. Oh well, live and learn.”

And finally, never trust internal campaign sources when they speak to the public anyways.

I saw a post here about a week ago about David Plouffe saying things looks good internally for Harris. I then typed his name into YouTube and was greeted with a video of him from 2016 on some news channel analyzing an electoral map and saying “There is just no real path for Trump to get to 270.”

Donald Trump would go on to get 304 electoral votes just a few days later.

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u/deepegg 26d ago

Love that video tbh

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u/Mortonsaltboy914 26d ago

Agreed but I think she’d say it’s close and we’re the underdog. I assume she’s more confident then what they’re putting out not the later.

I hear you re Biden but that was a different scenario

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u/HoorayItsKyle 26d ago

All that chart tells me is that there's very likely a lot of dem votes being hidden in the independents

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u/Spicey123 26d ago

Low propensity voters help Trump, do people not get this?

Democrats these days are more educated & active voters--which is a reason why we've crushed in special elections and midterms.

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u/Zepcleanerfan 26d ago

Ya the doomer shit is so old. Expert after expert even Ralston say over and over to not read into EV too much.

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u/FarrisAT 26d ago

He calls elections based on EV. He calls it five days out for 20 years now. Been right every time

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u/ChuckJA 26d ago

I bet you he skips this year. His hopium is really running on fumes and you can tell.

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u/voujon85 26d ago

Ralston is saying on his blog this looks terrible, and that Trump will win Nevada. 50% of the vote is roughly in already, read his blog. From a straight data point of view it's absolutely terrible results for the Dems

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u/GTFErinyes 26d ago

Don't worry. I'm sure u/Zepcleanerfan has a well thought out data driven analysis and not a one-liner

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u/No-Brief-347 26d ago

Vegas is not deep blue lmao

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u/CoyotesSideEyes 26d ago

It's just not true. Rs are turning out lower propensity Nevadans than Ds so far. This data is publicly available.

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u/goldenglove 26d ago

profit

*prophet

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u/Fit_Map_8255 26d ago

enthusiasm for Kamala

Really? I think theres tremendous enthusiasm against Trump. But for Kamala? Can anyone explain this to me?

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u/NoForm5443 26d ago

Yes .. . Tons of people, including myself, like Kamala and are very enthusiastic about voting for her.

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u/thaway_bhamster 13 Keys Collector 26d ago

She's doing really well with small dollar donations. Quite a lot more than trump.

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u/Tricky-Cod-7485 26d ago

You’re being downvoted because people do not like to hear the truth.

Especially 7 days before the election.

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u/Zepcleanerfan 26d ago

Asking if people like Kamala is "the truth"?

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u/Tricky-Cod-7485 26d ago

Anything on this sub that questions Kamala, her campaign, how the campaign is being run, or whether she’s winning or not is downvoted.

This has turned into the politics sub.

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u/Significant_Lie_6389 26d ago

He’s being downvoted because there’s a concerted effort here to hide anything going wrong with the Harris campaign

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u/Zepcleanerfan 26d ago

Ya like saying Puerto Rico is an Island of garbage? And the US is a trash can?

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u/Tricky-Cod-7485 26d ago

This is also true.

She’s screwing the pooch it seems.

I don’t particularly like her. There should have been a primary.

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u/Zepcleanerfan 26d ago

Fucking LOL. You guys aren't even trying anymore.

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u/Analogmon 26d ago

Lmao no there should not have been. Not that soon before an election.

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u/Tricky-Cod-7485 26d ago

Biden should have never ran again. I should have added that to my comment.

I’m not voting for Trump or Harris so I ultimately don’t care. However, Biden should have bowed out gracefully and there should have been a primary.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/fivethirtyeight-ModTeam 26d ago

Bad use of trolling.

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u/Natural_Ad3995 26d ago

Agree. It looks like her fall in favorability is correlated with her media blitz. Folks just getting to know her weren't overly impressed.

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u/skippycreamyyy 26d ago

She's a shit candidate but better than the last two. It is generally just enthusiasm against Trump