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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we're talking about Nevada, a state that has taken more money out of me over the years than I would like to admit. Nevada is a state where Democrats have done well in recent cycles, though it is not unheard of for the state to elect a Republican. In fact, Republican Dean Heller was elected to the Senate in 2012, and moderate Brian Sandoval was elected governor in 2010 and then reelected in 2014.
Biden, he won Nevada by about two and a half points in 2020. But with the Democrats slide with Hispanics and COVID hitting the hospitality-based economy especially hard, Republicans think that they have a great shot at winning both the governor's race as well as flipping a Senate seat. Now, I wanted to explore a burgeoning polling anomaly in which Joe Biden's low poll numbers don't seem to be dragging down individual Democratic candidates. That's unusual.
So this week, we talked to Dems and left-leaning independents who are frustrated with Biden and the Democrats and describe themselves as open to voting for Republicans. Now, if Republicans are going to flip the state, these are the voters they need to win over. My guest today is the dean of the Nevada Press Corps, John Ralston, CEO of the news site, The Nevada Independent. John, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me, Sarah. How is my pronunciation of Nevada? I am very impressed. We don't have to spend any time on lessons today. Okay, great. My staff wrote it out phonetically for me just to make sure I didn't mess it up. So for
First of all, I'm so glad you're here. Follow all your work. Love it. And before we jump into the focus groups, tell us about the state. Like what's going on? Give us just your broad, whenever you're kind of laying the groundwork for people to help them understand, just give us your like three minute rundown.
Yeah, I'll try not to go on for longer than that or maybe even that long. One of the things I found interesting in covering politics here for more than three and a half decades now, yes, I'm old, is people have this vision of Nevada still in a lot of ways. It's this kind of quirky, weird state. It's unlike the rest of America. There's casinos, there's prostitution, there's slot machines in grocery stores. But what's really happened since I moved here nearly 40 years ago is
Las Vegas has really become a very demographically diverse city that is really reflective of America more than people might think. There is life not just on the Las Vegas Strip, and there's all kinds of different people who live here. Sure, it's a service-based economy.
And as Donald Trump once famously said here when he was reading his poll results, I love the uneducated. There are a significant portion of non-college degree folks here. But Nevada gets disproportionately hit every time there is an economic downturn. And when COVID hit, Nevada...
really had a problem, especially because the governor essentially shut down the state, shut down the casinos, which was not an easy thing to do. And Nevada was really hurting. A lot of people lost their jobs. Our unemployment rates soared to one of the highest in the country. But right now we're coming back.
But we're not there yet. The unemployment rate is relatively good, but not necessarily relative to the rest of the country. And there's still a COVID hangover going on. And there were problems with people collecting unemployment benefits. But the Nevada economy seems to be coming back, although we're still too much of a one trick pony.
um, that came up obviously in the focus groups, people were talking about how hard their industries were hit, how it affected them and the people that they know. Um, have you watched a lot of focus groups or do you just focus group by, you know, hanging out with your neighbors? Uh,
I try not to hang out with my neighbors, Sarah. No, I'm joking. But yeah, I have seen many focus groups in the past. Yes. I've had the privilege of sitting in a bunch over my career. Was there anything about this one in particular that struck you as like, did they seem to you like, oh, yeah, that sounds like our state. So those are our people right there.
There were a few surprising things, but not many. But what really struck me, and maybe you want to talk about this more, is that, you know, not everyone is like you and me, Sarah. They actually have lives. They don't follow this stuff 24-7. And so when they think of politics, I expect people not to know that much about the candidates, even the high profile ones. They have more important things to do.
but the negativity continues to grow, I think, cycle after cycle and with good reason, perhaps, and maybe more so now than ever. But the lack of enthusiasm in those focus groups for almost anything that they were asked about or any candidate they were asked about, with maybe a couple of exceptions, was really something. Yeah, you know, it's true. And it's not uncommon, though I do think
I said this at the top, but I should be really clear that we screened on purpose to find people who are kind of down on Biden because we wanted people who represented the kind of voter that we think Republicans are trying to pick up, which is people who are mad about the state of the economy and inflation and see how that translated when they got into sort of like a head to head on the candidates.
But let's dive in there. That's a good place to start. So, you know, at the beginning of every group, we always ask people, you know, how do you think things are going in the country? And as you said, they were very down. So let's hear from this group about why they're open to voting for Republicans. Things have not been going well with the Democrats or the Republicans. I'm just not looking forward to this because it feels almost like no matter who you choose,
Nothing's getting done. I'm open to anything. I'm probably going to be waiting until the last minute because I want to see how everybody is doing at the end. I mean, are they keeping their word so far during that last week? I'm just literally open to anything right now. I just have to see where things go. As an African-American, we are brought up and taught to vote Democrat. That's all we know.
But I'm thinking back in history, I'm like, okay, we've had issues after issue after issue, not with just people like myself, but the country, you know, as a whole. And
And Democrats have had countless attempts to resolve these issues and they weren't done. So I'm not limiting myself anymore. The very progressiveness is new. So I'm not limiting myself anymore to just do what I did and was told to do and what my mother and her mother did. I'm going to weigh the issues and see which candidate wins.
presents the best option that I agree with, and I'm going with that candidate regardless of the party that they represent. I'm a new voter, and that's all we know is just to vote Democrat. But no, it's not like in these past few years it's been as official as we all thought it would be. Even when we had Obama in office, it wasn't like he did that much of a change either. So...
Okay. So Emerson College recently pulled Nevada and Biden's approval rating there is at 37%. So numbers like that are clearly downstream of this sense of malaise that people have. But there's been this narrative over the last month or so that Biden's making a comeback and he's notching up a bunch of wins. This group didn't seem to have gotten that memo. So what do you think, John Ralston, is going on with voters right now? Why do you think they seem so negative?
Well, listen, Biden's numbers in Nevada and, you know, any poll can be right or wrong, as you know, Sarah, even if it's a good pollster. But Biden's numbers here have traditionally been a few points worse than they are nationally, but not dramatically. One thing that's happened here that has never happened in all the years I've covered politics here is a surge in independent voters.
and non-major party registration to the extent that the Democrats who have led here for some time don't even have a lead in the state now. It's non-major party voters who have a plurality while the Democratic margin over Republicans has fallen a little bit. It's under three points now, where it's usually at five or six points.
And the sense of, as you heard that one African-American gentleman say, of being taken for granted, I think is also to some extent explaining why the very large and significant electoral block of Hispanic voters is drifting away from Democrats, thinking that maybe that they've been taken advantage of. I want to say real quickly, Sarah, and you know this very well, no demographic group is monolithic. And so that's not necessarily true throughout the entire
African-American or Hispanic community. But in races that are considered toss-ups, like the Senate race here, like the governor's race here, and we also have three competitive congressional races that are close, it could make a difference.
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