The GOP’s Early Voting Surge in Nevada With Jon Ralston
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. Okay, guys, we are a week from the election. Crazy, right? Exactly one week. I don't think we're going to have the results on election night, but that's a whole other story. But at least the people will get a chance to vote, and it will be over, and we will start counting. So on this show, we're going to talk about early voting and some of the trend lines that we're seeing, many of them favorable for Republicans in the battleground states. But first,

But first, I want to talk to you about Sunday night at the Garden. I was at Madison Square Garden for Trump's big rally. This was seen as like his way of showing that MAGA is a movement that can go into unfriendly territory like New York, where Republicans haven't won in 40 years. It was a flex, cost a million bucks, but Trump wanted to play at the Garden. He's a New Yorker.

So this is what he did in his final days. Also, it's a large media market and it hits some of the suburban house seats that are battleground seats that Republicans need to hold onto the house. So maybe it wasn't a complete miss. Harris, by the way, was in Houston in Texas, which it's very unlikely that Democrats will win with Beyonce. So sometimes it's more about just the media market and showing that you can go into all different territory. But that event at Madison Square Garden, it was extreme affliction.

offensive, sloppy in a time when you need a tight, disciplined campaign.

The comments that were being thrown around were racist and vulgar, offending entire voting blocks that Trump needs. And it was a week before the election. And a lot of the offensive comments were coming from a lineup of no-namers. Here are some of the lines. One of the speakers, a comedian, called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean. Another one called Harris the Antichrist while holding up a cross.

Another one said that Kamala Harris had pimp handlers who will destroy our country. It gets worse. Everybody was targeted. Black people, Latinos, women. One of the speakers called Doug Emhoff a crappy Jew. No one was missed except maybe white nationalists. Okay. Now, if you want to look under the hood at this, this may have been a huge mistake because

Because that comment about Puerto Ricans, which caused J-Lo, Bad Bunny, and Ricky Martin to endorse Harris within minutes, may have alienated a very big voting bloc in Pennsylvania that's Trump-curious. Puerto Ricans. There are about a half a million of them living in a state that is winner-takes-all 19 electoral college votes that Trump needs to win. And so he may have alienated a group of voters he needs in a race that will be determined on the margins. So...

No one is thinking right now that that was a good move. And believe me, the Trump team realized it. They never apologize. And they even put out a statement in which they took distance from the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe saying that his views do not reflect Trump or the Trump campaigns. That's saying something from a campaign that never apologizes. Now, I haven't even gotten to Trump's very dark speech. You know, he talked about how America was basically occupied by migrants and that, you

November 5th was going to be a liberation day. He wanted to bring back the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 to do the largest roundup of deportation in history. He talked about the enemy from within, an invasion of criminal migrants. He said he was going to go after his enemies. He

He said that the enemy of the people, they are Americans. And it really overshadowed his campaign slogan. Kamala broke it and I'll fix it. And are you happier today than you were four years ago? With this really, really, really intense messaging that was dark and scary and just shows you the nature of the MAGA movement and which way it's going.

I mean, at one point, Stephen Miller in the lineup said, America is for Americans only. And it's a phrase that was used in Nazi Germany. Germany is for Germans only. So it's just like parroting it. You know, at the same time,

There's a dispute within the Harris campaign over whether she's leaning too far into the fact that Trump is a fascist and that democracy is at risk. And some say, you know what, this is good and this gets out the base, but maybe she's missing the mark on the economy and Social Security and Medicare, which is what voters really want to hear about. In the meantime, as I reported last week, Trump is feeling very optimistic about

about his chances of winning. He thinks he will win this race. And they're really basing it on early voting returns. And some might say it's a fool's errand to try to look at early voting returns and see victory there because these early voters, these Republicans, they might be cannibalizing their votes. They may have been voters who normally go out on election day because Republicans typically vote on election day.

But Trump, now a convert who once called early voting rigged and fraudulent, now is early voting himself and is telling people to vote early. You know, they've been encouraging Republicans to vote early and now they're voting early. So we're seeing trend lines where more Republicans are voting early. Yeah.

You're seeing it in North Carolina. Republicans were outpacing Democrats last week in a state where Democrats tend to outpace Republicans in terms of early voting in Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, which we're going to talk about on this show. And that's a special case. But yeah, it seems to be that Republicans are coming out and it's been encouraging for his campaign. But again, it's a super close race.

And we'll see what happens. Still a little too early to tell in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But I know his team feels very optimistic about Pennsylvania. Again, it's really hard to compare 2024 numbers to 2020. We were in a once in a lifetime pandemic and a lot of states weren't voting early or vote by mail or absentee. And, you know, Trump said it was rigged and people shouldn't do it.

And now they're being encouraged to. There is one Democratic stronghold, the battleground state of Nevada, where Republicans seem to be coming in hot. And that's why I have John Ralston, the CEO and editor of the Nevada Independent on the show. He has been covering elections forever. He's a straight shooter. Both sides respect him. And he's ringing the alarm bells about the number of Republicans that are coming in to vote early in a state that the GOP hasn't won in two decades.

John, thanks so much for coming on the show. You are in the center of it all, Nevada, and you have been driving the Democrats in Washington, D.C.,

absolutely apoplectic over your tweets. And I interviewed you last week for my piece in Puck about early voting. And as I reported, Trump is feeling very encouraged by the early numbers, even though it's unclear whether these Republicans who are out voting early are cannibalizing election day results. But you told me at the time that you are seeing the most unusual turnout patterns

in the entire time that you've been tracking elections, which is since when, John? Like, when did you start doing this exactly? Well, I started covering politics here in 1986. Okay.

And this is still the most unusual turnout pattern you've seen. Well, it's certainly the most unusual turnout pattern since these things have been available to track, which I go back, you know, 20 years or so, Tara. And you look at what I call the Reed machine era when Harry Reid built this Democratic machine that has given them victories here in presidential cycles since 2008. We used to be a pretty reliably red state. Now they've been blue for the last four cycles.

But in all of those cycles in the read machine era, the Republicans have never had a lead ever during early voting. And now they built up a pretty substantial lead. We're doing this podcast and they have more than 32,000 vote leads statewide in ballots. We're recording this on Monday for everyone listening, by the way. And so there is definitely concern among Democrats, both here nationally. Now, they still think

that it's going to be a close race in Nevada, that they're going to win independents who are a significant cohort now in Nevada. They're 40% of registered voters, and Democrats think that they're going to win those and they'll be able to make it close. But remember, they're saying the best case scenario for them is that they win this by 10,000 votes or so out of 1.3, 1.4 million cast. So even if it's close, that's going to take a lot for them to do that. So...

what have Democrats been doing ever since this news? I mean, like you said, Republicans haven't won in 20 years. Biden and Hillary both won, Biden in 2020 and Hillary in 2016 by two and a half points, basically the same margin, right?

what are they doing now to get their voters out? Have you seen any activity? Like I think you said, Bryan Cranston's out there knocking on doors. Well, you do you do read my tweets. So, yeah, Bryan, they're doing they're pulling out all the stops. Right. They're bringing in celebrities. They're they're they're doing all kinds of events to gin up voting. But the

Turnout here has also changed here in the sense that during COVID, we became a primarily mail ballot state, or at least I should say we became an opt out versus an opt in state for mail ballots. So mail ballots are really important. Democrats love voting by mail. And so they still think that these mail ballots that are going to come in in this last week are going to change the turnout pattern in their favor.

Something else you mentioned that's important is the front loading of the Republican vote this time. You remember in 2020, mail balloting was evil. Early voting was not great. Just vote on Election Day. That's what Republicans do. Well, now the Trump campaign is sending out texts telling his voters to vote early and vote by mail, drop off the mail, all the rest of it. So

They are cannibalizing part of their election day vote. How much they'll end up cannibalizing, we'll know more in about five or six days. But clearly election day is going to look very different. And in Nevada, generally, most of the vote comes in before election day. It's usually about two thirds until 2020. The last two cycles, it's been 80 and 90% of the vote

has been in before election day. That's a ton. So you'll be able to know a lot before election day here. Where are we at right now in terms of returns? Right now, we're probably at about half the vote being in. It depends how many people. Oh, yeah. It depends

how many people vote. There's more than, I think it's about 650,000 now or just under, and the turnout's going to be 1.3, 1.4 probably. So you're going to have to vote in already, which is why the Republicans are so optimistic. And the Republicans usually do well

This is history in the first few days of early voting in the second week. We just started the second week today on Monday. So if they do well today and tomorrow, I think the concern goes to panic for the Democrats. And-

What do you think is the reason why Republicans are coming out so enthusiastically right now for Trump? I know he said no tax on tips. Obviously, that would be something very popular. He made that announcement in Vegas, right, in Nevada. And there's a huge hospitality industry in Nevada. But, you know, what else do you account for this issue?

It seems to be enthusiasm. I know you're not supposed to look at early voting as enthusiasm, but it's kind of hard not to, right? So first of all, I am mandated by state law to say that it's Nevada and I'm going to get killed if I don't tell you that it's Nevada and not Nevada. I said Nevada.

It's okay. Los Ciento. Steve Wynn, who was maybe the most well-known Nevadan, says Nevada. And he and I always go back and forth about that and being the original Spanish pronunciation. But forget that. But yeah, the Spanish pronunciation.

pronunciation is Nevada, like the Sierra Nevadas. Yeah, exactly. Let's not forget where we came from, people, okay? Exactly. You're going back to the roots. Colonizers. The no taxes on tips thing actually was a very smart thing I thought that the Trump campaign did to try to peel away the culinary workers from their leadership and

And we'll see how well that works. But the real reason for this is because the rural vote, Nevada has 17 counties, two of them are urban, Reno and Vegas, and then the rest are very deep red. And they have turned out disproportionately so far in the early going.

And so that is the reason why the Republicans have a lead. It's almost all because there's this huge surplus of rural ballots so far. Now, you would think that's going to change. Clark County, Vegas has two thirds of the vote and it's it's coming out disproportionately low to its actual registration numbers.

that's where the Democrats have hope that this mail in Clark County is going to change that dynamic. That remains to be seen. As I said, if in a few days that doesn't start to change for the Democrats, they're going to get worried that there's going to be carnage up and down the ballot, including the Senate race, potentially. Are they

rural voters, first time voters, low propensity voters that Trump's team is really banking on? Um, no, they're just the opposite of that in general, but the rural counties have gone by landslide margins for Republicans and especially for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Um, and so, uh,

I think it could be an even bigger landslide. Usually the margin in the rural counties, which only about 10 or 12 percent of the vote, can't offset the huge amount of Democratic votes in Clark County because there's so many more votes.

But that may not be the case this time. And Democrats are worried about it. Republicans really sound supremely confident here. And a few I've talked to nationally, you probably talk to more of them. They're pretty optimistic about Nevada. Yeah, they are actually. Obviously, Trump can't just win Nevada.

to win this, but it certainly helps offset some losses like in Wisconsin or Michigan, right? Which aren't looking so great for him right now, according to some of my sourcing. But a lot of these voters that have come in, have any of them been first time voters or have any of them been low propensity voters that have come through? Because again, this is something that we're looking at in terms of whether Trump is able to bring these people out. They have

bragged that they're getting out all these low propensity voters terrible. But the stats that I've seen, and there are a lot of people who try to do this, and it's hard to get, dig that, you know, deeply into the data. They say the Democrats are about the same in terms of pulling out their low propensity voters as well.

But again, we're far from the end of this. I said 50% of the vote may be in, but there are going to be hundreds of thousands of votes still cast here. I mean, you know, maybe as many as 750,000. So we'll see how many people come out late as came out early. So I asked you about the Democrats ground game and how they're dealing with this anxiety. What about the Republicans?

I mean, what's their ground game look like in Nevada? There you go. You said it like us locals and not like the Spanish, our Spanish ancestors. Anyhow, the bottom line is, is that the Republican Party historically here has been terrible. They've been run by incompetence. They wouldn't even know what the word infrastructure or GOTV means. And so, for instance, get out the vote, kids. Yeah.

You can go as far back as 2012 when Romney campaign was so worried about the incompetence of the Republican Party, they set up a parallel organization to help get out the vote. Now, Romney ended up losing, but...

Things changed here, though, and this is what's really interesting. In 2022, when the first Republican governor in a couple of decades was elected, and that is I shouldn't say a couple of decades, but the first Republican governor was elected despite Democratic wins down ballot.

How did that happen? Yeah, Lombardi. Yeah. How did that happen? Lombardo. Yeah, because he Lombardo, sorry, because he understood his team understood. And this is not the Republican Party. It's his team that essentially said the demographics of Nevada electorate have changed incredibly.

Independence are now a plurality of the vote. We need to model independence, which is something that Adam Laxalt, who lost the Senate race in 2020, did not do. And so they understood the change. Now, there are internal dynamics of every race, right? The Democratic incumbent governor was the only one to lose in 2022, had some baggage from COVID, from shutting down the state.

That kind of thing. It also had an issue with the donors' kids getting a COVID testing. And Nevada was very traumatized by COVID because its entire industry had to shut down in Las Vegas, right? That's right. The strips shut down for two months, which killed the state. Our unemployment rate went up to like 30 percent. We haven't recovered as well. And so the economic argument that Trump is making, they think resonates here more than it does elsewhere. And they may be right.

There may be what in the olden days, you know, before you were born, were called Reagan Democrats. Do those exist now? And in the service industry here, are they going to help Trump? First,

as the turnout operation goes, though, as you know, the Trump campaign outsourced this to like Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk. But and which I thought was a joke because none neither of those guys know anything the way that the operatives in the read machine know how to do it. But Musk has hired someone in this state who really does understand it, who by by not by coincidence is the guy who modeled independence for Lombardo. Who is it? It's

This guy named Chris Carr, who's a very, very savvy operative, used to work for the Trump campaign, used to be the political director of the RNC, lives in Vegas. Very smart guy. The problem

problem that Chris is going to have, even though I think he's going to help, is that you can't erect this kind of infrastructure to turn out voters overnight. It takes months and months, sometimes years of work, but it's better than nothing. It's better than having Elon Musk knocking on your door saying, here's a million dollars, come out to vote. I think he could actually help the Republicans. So far,

You know, the Republicans have done, as you know, pretty well here. Let's see what happens in the second week. Anything that makes you think that the tide is going to turn for Democrats? I see some things in the makeup of the electorate as it exists now. You know, it is it was in the early going of early voting more.

males than females were voting. That's very bad for Democrats. It's switched now. It's starting to turn. The Republicans are winning by less every day, but they're still winning. So

So I think the next two days are going to be really, really interesting to watch a terror because traditionally the Monday and Tuesday of early voting in the second week that the Republicans have done well, it's a historical trend. If they can build that lead up that ballot lead up, it makes the margin for error for Democrats winning independence. You know, it's,

Very, very difficult, which is why they essentially say, we always thought this was going to be close. It was a 50-50 race. We think it's going to be a 10,000 vote race. If that's your best case, if that's your best case that you're going to win by less than a percentage point, then you see the issue that they have.

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Opendoor is represented by Opendoor Brokerage Inc., licensed 0206-1130 in California, and Opendoor Brokerage LLC in its other markets. Terms and conditions apply. I wanted to also ask you about these independents, right? You keep talking about independents. What's the story in Nevada about independents? And why are there so many of them? I believe last time we talked, you mentioned that

When you get a license now, they automatically register you to vote. Can you kind of explain what's going on? Are these people that are registered to vote, are they even going to vote? And what is the story about how they're registered when they register their car? So it's a great question, and it has driven a lot of the turnstiles.

It's called automatic voter registration. These laws exist in some other states passed here about five years ago. So it's affected the state since 2020 took effect in January of 2020. You can now go to the DMV and register when you're when you're renewing your your license or your car registration and you can register as a Republican or Democrat. If you don't, you are

automatically registered as a nonpartisan voter. So it's caused this explosion of nonpartisan voters that are now the plurality in the state. But a lot of them, and both parties agree on this, are zombie voters. That is, people who don't even know they're registered, don't have any interest in voting, probably won't vote. And so that is why, even more so than usual, Tara, the polling in Nevada is probably way off.

because they're polling based on what they see as so many independents. But independents are not going to be 40 percent of the vote. They'll be lucky if they get to 30. And so some of these polls are going to be skewed. And which independents are turning out? Its bottom line is this. The Democrats think they're going to win independents by five points or so, which will make the race close. If Trump is winning independents in Nevada, it's

carnage up and down the ballot. He'll win the state. Jackie Rosen could lose the Senate race and they could even lose some of these congressional races that were thought to be a sure thing. I saw that the Senate Leadership Fund, that's, you know, Mitch McConnell's super PAC is putting money behind Sam Brown, the Senate candidate who

I mean, that was sort of unheard of. $3 million he's dropping into that race. So McConnell thinks that they could pick up a Senate seat in Nevada? Like, when was the last time you guys, Republicans had a Senate seat in Nevada? Nevada. You know what? Everyone who's listening to this from Nevada, you can send me a hate mail, okay? Tara at puck.news. But for what it's worth, I never care how people say my name. I say it Tara, and people say Tara, Tara. It's the same thing. So there you go. Okay, but let's get back to the Senate race, more importantly. So there

There are some who claim the NRSC was always going to put some money in here, but I think they've seen these numbers and they've gotten more confident. Sam Brown was thought to have lost the race. Most of the public polling showed Jackie Rosen well ahead, even by double digits in some polls, even though I didn't believe that. She's the incumbent Democrat. Yeah, she's the incumbent. Yes, excuse me. And so I never thought it was Senate races in Nevada, just they're not decided by big margins. But

Besides them dumping that money in, guess who's coming to town tomorrow? Steve Daines, who's the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He's doing an event with Sam Brown. He's sending a message. The early vote looks good for us. We can do this. And so they're very

encouraged by it, as I think they should be. Now, whether the Democrats can change that again, I don't know. But they're spending, Rosen campaign and the Democratic affiliated PACs are spending more money on TV. The way that this happened, Tara, is that Sam Brown was considered out of the race because Jackie Rosen had so much more money. And she came out right after the primary here in June and just swamped the airwaves with tying Sam Brown to all his different positions on abortion. And so,

That hurts in a state that is two-thirds pro-choice state. So he was thought to be on his heels right away. He's not a top-tier candidate, by the way. He hasn't lived here that long. He's got a great personal story to tell about heroism. He was badly burned and survived. But he just has not caught on. But...

The turnout and the unusual turnout pattern we've been talking about has encouraged Steve Daines and the NRSC to say, maybe we can win this race. Interesting. Okay. So my thinking on...

in general is that they like to beat their chest psychologically. Perhaps their voters like to hear that they're going to win and they want to be a part of a winning team and they want to send the message out to their voters like, look at us. Early voting shows were up. We're winning. This is the winning team. Come out and vote for us. Right. And they do this all the time, even in 2022. And they basically said it was going to be a red wave and it ended up being a red trickle. It's just their MO. It might be this like pseudo masculine. I don't know. Yeah.

thing that is going on inside the party. But Democrats, on the other hand, they motivate through paranoia. Like that's their get out the vote method is we're going to lose. We need you out there. Start bedwetting. All of it fired the alarms, PTSD. And that's their way of getting people out to vote. What's your take top line from this? Do you think that this is more than

Republicans just beating their chest. Like, do you think ultimately that this is actually a case of momentum? Whereas maybe there are other parts of the country where early voting numbers are better for Republicans. And it's just those are just people who are going to vote anyway. But you genuinely think in Nevada, this is a different case, that this is that this is a sign of something different. I think it is right now. And I think they have reason to be confident that this turnout pattern is going to be sustained.

I can tell you that I've never seen anything like it. I think I told you that before in a presidential race. Now, the

The Democrats believe that these mail ballots, let me just give you a number, there have been about 230,000 mail ballots returned in Clark County where two-thirds of the vote is where the Democrats are strong. In 2020, there was twice that number turned in by the end. So if they can double that number as they did in 2020, then I think that they could change the dynamic of the race. But

I completely agree with your description of the Republicans and the Democrats. Republicans with the chest thumping and the Democrats with the constant fretting and saying, we're going to lose, we're going to lose, you have to go out to vote. Different motivational strategies. Does it reflect the psychology of the voters? Who knows, right? It's hard to tell, but...

Right now, I think it's fair to say, even though my Democratic friends in Nevada are not going to like me saying this, I'd rather be the Republicans than the Democrats because they're the ones who have to make up ground. Now, they think they're doing OK right now. They will tell you that, that they look and they see that their independents are turning out and that there and there are a lot of independents that have turned out their quarter of the vote, that they're going to win those. And that that evens out the ballot edge that the Republicans.

But you'd rather be the Republicans than the Democrats right now. Got it. Yeah, I've heard that from a few others as well. So in Georgia, Arizona. But how does this change the race in terms of the battleground states in the map? Like for Trump, if he takes Arizona, I know I mentioned it could offset losses in Wisconsin or Michigan. But like to you, from your perspective, how does this change the race if he wins Nevada? Well, I mean, that's a state he flipped, right? And that's important as Arizona would be.

And so that's important. But my scenario is still the same as it is when I changed my Twitter picture from myself to the 266 to 266 scenario. And all of you national reporters have to be camped out in Vegas for about a month while we wait for the returns. Oh, my God. Really? Is that how long they're saying right now? It could take that long. It's hard to tell. It's really hard to tell. I think we're going to, you know, all of you folks...

rightly mocked us in 2020 for taking so long to count our votes and in 2022, by the way. But I think they're going to do it much faster this time. And remember, they've changed some of the system. They've already started counting the mail ballots. They usually had to wait. They changed that law.

But 80 to 90 percent of the votes going to be in before Election Day. And they're going to pop those numbers up and we're going to know what happened here. Arizona is where we're going to have to wait for a really long time. Maricopa County's already warned. We're going to take our time counting those votes. So kids, we may not know on election night.

What's going on? That's very likely. That's very likely here, too, if the race ends up being close. If we know on election night that that's going to tell us a lot about what's happening down ballot and maybe across the country, because another thing people forget. Let me brag about this. Las Vegas really is a mirror of the country in many, many different ways. It's grown into a really demographically diverse country.

as opposed to the caricature. Not that I'm saying you've ever done this or anyone at Puck would ever do this. That's painted. Well, if I have to go to Las Vegas, I will ask for a good hotel recommendation. I'm not a big gambler, to be honest. I think I played blackjack in college and won like a hundred bucks. And that was probably the last time I played. So I,

I'm happy to give hotel and restaurant recommendations to all my friends in the national media. You're going to need it. You're going to be here for a while. We're going to decide the whole thing. Mark my words. Okay. I got it. Well, I'll be in Palm Beach on election night. You can watch me on Amazon prime their election night special. I'll be there. Correspondent contributor. So that's a, that's kind of fun thing. So everyone listening to this show should definitely tune into that. Is,

Is that the one Brian Williams is anchoring? Yes, with Brian Williams. Yep, yep. And Shep Smith from Fox, you know him. He's going to be at the Harris headquarters. Oh, is that right? It should be fun. Wow. Yeah, it'll be fun. We have a good lineup. James Carville will be on, Mike Murphy, a lot of others. So, you know what? Everybody tune in to Amazon. It's their first foray into news, live news, and they've obviously done well with live sports. So they're trying it out. Good for you. Ours truly will be on there.

along with my colleague Baratunde as well. He'll be on too. But John, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for inviting me. You are a panic inducer. So thank you.

And for Republicans, they're loving everything you've got to say. So but I think you're keeping it real. So I appreciate it. And you are known as a trusted source across parties. Thank you for saying that. Well, I wouldn't have anyone else on. All right. Thanks so much for your time.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, the best and the brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20, that's uppercase T-A-R-A 20 for 20% off a subscription at Puck. See you on Thursday.