The entire nation will vote on the next president of the United States this fall, but the election will likely come down to seven key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. With the outsized importance of these states, it’s worth taking a closer look at the data we have in each of them — not just where the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump stands today, but also each candidate’s path to victory and what issues could tip the election. Second up: the Silver State, Nevada, which is part of an increasingly purple swath in the Southwest.
The history
With one exception — 1976 — Nevada voted for the winner in every presidential contest from 1912 until 2016, when it broke its winning streak by voting for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by just over 2 points. While it has only six electoral votes, those votes have proven decisive in the tight contests of the recent era. Nevada helped elect President Joe Biden in 2020, who carried the state by a nearly identical margin to Clinton’s, and in 2022, the purple state helped determine control of the Senate in a close race that took days to call.
Presidential margins in the state have been narrow over the last two decades (with the exception of former President Barack Obama’s relatively big wins in 2008 and 2012) and in many cases have closely approximated the national popular vote. Despite having consistently tight races, the state has been steadily blue in presidential races since 2008, while also trending right compared to the country as a whole. In 2008, Obama won Nevada by 12 percentage points, compared to his 7-point win nationally, putting the state 5 points to the left of the country. But in each election since then, Nevada has inched right. In 2020, Biden won nationally by 4 points, but only won the Silver State by 2, placing it to the right of the national popular vote for the first time since the 2004 presidential election.
The 2024 polls
Polls show an even closer race this year. Harris leads by about 1 point in 538’s polling average of the state.* That’s a little worse than her performance nationally, where she leads Trump by nearly 3 points, but it’s an improvement over Biden, who was trailing Trump in the state.
The demographics
Nearly three-fourths of Nevada’s population of 3.1 million lives in the Las Vegas metropolitan area in the state’s southern tip, giving the city a dominant place in the electoral politics of the Silver State. Beyond that, the Reno metropolitan area on the state’s western bend clocks in with nearly half a million people, while most of the rest of the state is an extremely rural desert.
A little over 28 percent of the state’s total population is Hispanic or Latino, making it the largest minority group in the state. Indeed, the state is home to the first Latina senator, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, and targeting Latinos in the Las Vegas area has been an important strategy for both parties. A report from the University of Southern California’s Center for Inclusive Democracy found that while only about half of Latino voters across the country turned out in 2020 compared to about two-thirds of the general population, they still made up 15 percent of all voters in Nevada that year. And, as we see in polls across the country, Republicans seem to be making gains with these voters; in an average of polls conducted over the last month, Nevada Latino voters said they would vote for Harris over Trump by a 21-point margin (58 percent to 37 percent)**, a slight drop from the 26-point margin Biden had over Trump among the demographic in 2020, but about on par with national polling among Latino voters.
The state is also growing and diversifying rapidly. Its population increased 15 percent between 2010 and 2020, driven by growth among minority groups as the white population shrank, according to the Center for Inclusive Democracy report. That included around 40 percent growth in both Asian and Black populations in the state. Overall, one-third of Nevada voters in 2020 were nonwhite — a number that could increase this year if those demographic trends have continued.
The state also has a slightly lower percentage of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree — 29 percent — compared to 36 percent nationwide. The divide between voters with or without college degrees has been one of the most important political divides of the past few elections, and voters without college degrees have become another battleground demographic group of sorts. Since his first presidential run, Trump has dominated among white voters without college degrees, while college graduates have migrated solidly into the Democratic Party. And while Black and Latino voters still overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Democrats in recent elections, those without college degrees have been trending toward the Republican Party like their white counterparts have been.
All of that means that the state abounds with key demographic groups for each party, which helps explain why the elections there have been so close.
The issues
To a unique degree, Nevada’s economy depends on the hospitality industry. It was among the states most impacted by the recession during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pandemic’s economic impacts were particularly lasting there.
Unsurprisingly, the top issue for Nevada voters going into the election is the economy, which 39 percent of likely voters named as the most important issue facing their state in an Emerson College/The Hill poll of swing states from September. But that’s actually a bit less than the share of voters nationally (43 percent) who said the same in a similar poll from Emerson College in September. In fact, with the exception of Arizona, Nevada voters were the least likely of all swing-state voters to name the economy as their top issue. Instead, many appear to be focused on a related issue that has been particularly troubling in the state: housing.
Housing affordability was the second most important issue to Nevada voters, with 16 percent naming it as their top issue, the highest of any state in the Emerson swing-state surveys. Nevada’s surge of new residents, concentrated in the Las Vegas area, has put pressure on a housing market struggling to keep up with demand. Many new residents are moving in from California, which has a much higher cost of living, making Nevada a bargain for them but helping push prices out of reach for existing residents. According to Zillow, the Home Value Index in Nevada has grown 34 percent since the start of the Biden presidency, slightly faster than the rate of increase nationwide. The median rental price in Nevada is $2,075, which is $25 less than the national median but represents a $75 increase since September 2023. And Harris may have an advantage on the issue: According to a September Bloomberg/Morning Consult survey, Nevadans trust Harris over Trump on the issue of housing by a 10-point margin (49 percent to 39 percent of registered voters).
On the other hand, Trump appears to have an advantage on the economy in the state (as he does nationally). Fifty-three percent of registered voters in Nevada trust him more than Harris on the issue, according to an August CNN/SSRS poll. According to an earlier Emerson College/The Hill poll of the state, 71 percent of likely voters also support Trump’s proposal (that’s also been adopted by Harris) to eliminate taxes on tips, perhaps because so many Nevadans work in industries where they receive tips in addition to wages. Both candidates announced their support for the policy at rallies in Las Vegas.
Beyond the economy, immigration is also a big issue for Nevadans, with 8 percent naming it as the most important issue facing their state in the Emerson College/The Hill September poll. A look at the demographic breakdown also shows that the issue is more complicated than topline numbers might indicate. Latinos care more about the economy (44 percent) and housing affordability (16 percent) than immigration (5 percent). White Nevadans were more likely to say immigration was their top issue (9 percent), but it still came in behind the economy (38 percent), housing affordability (15 percent) and threats to democracy (11 percent).
The downballot races
Nevada is also electing a U.S. senator this year. But while Cortez Masto’s reelection was close in 2022, her fellow Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is polling well ahead of her Republican challenger this year, Afghanistan war veteran Sam Brown. State voters will also be deciding whether to adopt a new voting system that would allow top-five, all-party primaries and ranked-choice voting in general elections, similar to a system currently in place in Alaska.
Another ballot measure will give Nevada voters the chance to decide whether to codify the right to abortion before fetal viability in the state constitution. (Abortion is currently protected in Nevada by state law.) While abortion is not the most important topic for voters in Nevada, the state is among the most liberal in the nation when it comes to wanting to ensure access. A full 80 percent of Nevada adults oppose criminalizing abortion before fetal viability, according to a survey from the University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation earlier this summer. And 64 percent would favor a federal law ensuring abortion access. Nevada is also the most supportive swing state when it comes to access to birth control: 90 percent of Nevada voters support the federal government continuing to require health insurance plans to cover long-term birth control, like IUDs. That’s more than any other swing state polled and the U.S. as a whole.
Some activists have been hoping that ballot measures like this might help Democrats at the top of the ticket, either by encouraging turnout among sympathetic demographic groups or keeping the issue of abortion (on which Democrats have a big lead) in the news. But the evidence for abortion-related ballot measures juicing turnout is fairly mixed.
Footnotes
*All numbers in this article are as of Sept. 27 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern.
**Based on polls of likely and registered voters only (if a poll included results among both populations, we used likely voters). If a poll included both a head-to-head matchup between Harris and Trump and a version including third parties, we used the head-to-head version. Crosstabs among groups defined by pollsters as “Latino” and “Hispanic” are both included. Finally, if a polling organization (defined as a partnership between a pollster and sponsor, or a pollster alone if their work was not sponsored by an outside group) had more than one survey in the relevant time frame, only the most recent version was included. All polls conducted and released between Aug. 27 and Sept. 27 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern are included.
