Chasing the Vote: Nevada’s ‘None of the Above’ Voters
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Down by the Truckee River, there's a farmer's market, which is kind of a lively scene on a Sunday morning. And we've got people milling around, food trucks, buying organic strawberries and peaches.

some nice iced coffees, and a lot of kids and dogs running around. It was also as good a place as any to talk to voters in Reno, the second largest city in Nevada. When I first went in June, it was easy to find people who were far from excited about the rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. It would be nice if there was a nonpartisan candidate. Like, there's got to be someone out there that would have the support of a lot of people. It just seems like...

That was Mike Short, Katie Payne, and Alex Mahan, all Reno residents who, like many Americans, have long viewed voting this fall as like picking from an undesirable menu, perhaps especially when Biden was still on the ticket. I went back to Reno in September after Vice President Kamala Harris had replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee to run against Trump.

I wanted to know, since the choice between the major party candidates had changed, are people still feeling meh about their options? Is there still a big appetite in Nevada for third party candidates?

At one point, before he dropped out of the race, a Wall Street Journal poll found 15% of voters in the state supported independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy. That was the highest number in any of the half-dozen swing states where Republicans and Democrats have focused their campaigning. Now, with Kennedy out of the race and backing Trump, where will his supporters go?

I'm Jimmy Vielkind, and this is Chasing the Vote, a multi-part series from The Wall Street Journal. I've been traveling to battleground states to examine the issues that matter most in the presidential race. Our last episode looked at how voters in Georgia weighed perceived threats to democracy against other concerns, like the economy. I came to Nevada to get a sense of how this election is being influenced by voters who at times wish they could check none of the above.

Sometimes you hear people like this called double haters, but talking to a bunch of them, I detected more of an exasperation or exhaustion than anything like hate.

They're at a higher concentration in this western state than other places, and they'll play a key role in the race that Biden won here in 2020 by around 34,000 votes out of about 1.4 million cast. There are more Nevadans not in a political party than enrolled as either Republicans or Democrats, according to voter registration statistics.

When Texas billionaire Ross Perot ran for president as a third-party candidate in 1992, he won 26% of the vote here, which was about seven points ahead of his national vote share. Some of these people are still in the electorate. I've always found the West to have a little bit more of a libertarian streak in both Republicans and Democrats. That's my colleague Elizabeth Findel.

Nevada is a state that you never quite know what it's going to do. The polls aren't accurate. It's a very transient state. So every four years, it's almost like you have a whole new electorate. She was in Las Vegas reporting on get out the vote efforts. That's particularly important in Vegas, the state's largest city and the Democrats stronghold. Republicans dominate in the rural areas.

That leaves the Reno area as what many consider to be the most competitive part of the state and kind of the place that could swing either way and could swing the state as a whole. That's why a grassroots progressive group called Swing Left has been focused on the Reno area. One weekend last month, two groups of Swing Left volunteers from California came to Nevada to knock on voters' doors.

Meanwhile, about a dozen local residents who are also part of the group gathered at a cafe for another form of advocacy. I am filling out postcards with my poor penmanship, trying to get people to get out and vote. Richard Cluess is a 66-year-old retired engineer who now lives in Reno. He's new to campaign work. He said he was too busy with his job to volunteer like this before.

But his motivation is simple. It didn't matter whether the Democratic candidate was Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. He wanted to stop Trump. Kamala seems to have a lot of the same opinions, some different. I guess, again, at this point, I'm just I'm concerned about the other party right now.

I spoke with almost everyone in the room, and this was a common sentiment. I noticed that the people who are over 60, and almost everyone was, said they would have been volunteering for Democrats even if Biden were still the candidate. Here's 77-year-old Cheryl Clark. I didn't care who the Democrats put it back in. They could have put Mickey Mouse in, and I would be here writing letters saying, vote for Mickey Mouse.

But the younger volunteers were more open in talking about the relief they felt when Biden stepped down. Andrea Lau, a 48-year-old artist, said Biden was never her choice and she wished he had made good on his promise to be a transitional leader. I mean, I would have voted for him, but I was thrilled when he stepped aside. And I would have actually supported Biden.

If someone else had stepped up even without him stepping aside, I would have done whatever I could have to support that. Lau said the dynamic shifted once Harris stepped up. The energy is just so much different. Honestly, it's a relief. I mean, I was terrified when Trump was polling as high as he was. And the immediate shift was very motivating, actually, I think, to be active because it felt like, oh, there's a chance. It's like little things that we do could actually make a difference.

In Wall Street Journal polling from July, nationwide support for Harris was five percentage points higher than Biden's last rating as a candidate. Harris held a one-point lead over Trump in the August WSJ poll, which was within the margin of error and shows the race is essentially deadlocked. But that's not the only way momentum has shifted. More on that after the break.

This podcast is brought to you by CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, offering the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes. CME Group, where risk meets opportunity. The Nevada State Fair is held in a park in Carson City, a couple miles from the state capitol. It's not the biggest fair.

but it's certainly really eclectic. There's corn dogs and popcorn, funnel cakes, and one beer stand. There's a Ferris wheel and some other rides and people having a good time. The only political booth that I see is Bobby Kennedy's. When I went to the fair on my first Nevada trip, Bobby Kennedy's volunteers were collecting signatures to get him back on the ballot after Nevada's Democratic Secretary of State invalidated his original petitions.

It wasn't a hard sell. Several fairgoers said they signed because they felt people should have the option of voting for Kennedy, even if they weren't going to choose him themselves. There's so many double haters out there, so many people that are fed up with the two candidates running again, and they're looking for an alternative. That's Steve Mizak. He works in software, and like many people in Reno, he moved here from California. He said he didn't vote in 2020 because he didn't like Biden or Trump.

And he had a clear disdain for the Republican. Because when I hear him speak, I don't hear anything intelligent and I don't often hear truth. So it's very disconcerting that he's so popular with a segment of the American population. The issue that Bobby brings up is the corporate takeover of the government agencies. And I can see it. It's obvious. And none of the other candidates are talking about that or about it in any other way.

But Kennedy's campaign got bogged down trying to get on the ballot in various states, and it faced numerous legal challenges from groups aligned with Democrats. With funds running low, Kennedy met with Trump and later publicly endorsed him. Don't you want the chemicals out of our food? And don't you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption? And that's what President Trump told me that he wanted.

I was curious where this left Kennedy's supporters, including some, like Misak, who were very skeptical of Trump. Misak told me in September that he was listening to longer-form interviews and wrapping his head around voting for the former president. We trust Bobby. I think in many ways he's a loved candidate. I'm sure there are a lot of Republicans out there that love Trump for some reason. I don't see it as a love relationship. I can respect him but not love him. With Kennedy, it's different.

Another woman I met at the fair and later followed up with is Michelle Mauchow. She told me she was disappointed when Kennedy backed Trump, but she's also coming around. I spoke with her along with a group of Kennedy campaign volunteers last month at a park in Reno. I definitely will not vote for Harris. Absolutely not. So it's either going to be Trump or no one for me. There were five people in the group.

They all said they were angry with how the Democratic Party treated Kennedy, including its refusal to host primary debates. The party said debates weren't needed because the Democratic National Committee was supporting Biden. The Kennedy supporters also said they were hopeful that Trump would give Kennedy a substantive policymaking role if he's elected. So I'm at a point where, you know, I wasn't going to do anything. And then I was going to vote for a third party. Then I decided on Trump. So right now I'm still on the Trump thing, but I want to see what he's going to do.

That was Janice Berard, who's lived in Reno since 1979. If he's not going to give Bobby any recognition and give him a little boost, just like Bobby's giving Trump a boost, then I might have to back off a little bit. I don't know. So it'll be a strategic vote. Berard has always been an independent voter. She told me she voted for Ross Perot in '92. Now she's modifying her Kennedy signs using scissors and paste to say "Kennedy Trump."

Tracey Thomas, vice chair of the Washoe County Republican Party, which includes Reno, told me she could already tell Kennedy's endorsement would be a boost for the former president. I think everybody's getting tired of the politics. I think they're getting tired of the elite establishment on both sides of the party. And I think when Trump first ran, he almost thought about going as an independent and creating his own party then, even then. So...

He may have accomplished that now with the union with Kennedy. So has the candidate shuffle created more momentum for Trump or for Harris? We'll hear from more voters after the break. How is AI pushing the boundaries of what's possible, not just in the way we live and work, but in addressing some of humanity's toughest challenges? Find out in the latest episode of AI That Means Business, a new podcast from Google and custom content from WSJ.

Every September, Reno hosts a hot air balloon race. It's a big deal. Saw a chase from Paw Patrol. It's a carnival atmosphere here. The first launches were before dawn and from the big casino towers downtown, you could look north and see the sky slowly start to fill with colors.

Thousands of people gathered at Rancho San Rafael Park, a sprawling open space on the north side of town. As they gazed at the sky, I asked several people about the presidential race.

Prince Monaco, a 36-year-old from Reno, has his own metric for political momentum. I'm a landscaper, so I see who posts everything outside of their doors. This state is going for Trump so far, as I can tell. If Nevada does flip to the Republican column this fall, Monaco says he'll be part of the reason why. He told me he voted for Biden in 2020 because he had misgivings about Trump. He called him a loose cannon.

But he said he doesn't like Harris' policies on the economy and foreign aid. Realistic, I'd rather vote for Kennedy. If it boils down to those two candidates, yes, I'm going to go with Trump. Another man named Daniel, who would only give his first name, was sitting on the grass as his kids played nearby. He said he grew up in a Republican house, but voted for Libertarian presidential candidates in the last two elections. He wasn't sure who he would support this fall.

I don't like either. There are specific policies for both that I probably would agree with and many that I don't agree with. Which is again why I wish that we could vote according to policy rather than party. It was a Sunday, so I went back to the farmer's market along the river. It was once again bustling. The iced coffee is still great. And I was able to meet up again with some of the people I met in June. Alex Mahan, a student, was there with his dog Aries. In June, he wasn't sure if he was going to vote.

With Biden off the ticket, he said he would back Harris. I also checked back in with Katie Payne and her boyfriend, Connor Zawilinski, who said in June they were reluctant to vote for Biden. They're feeling better about Harris and Walz. I'm a little more hopeful. I would obviously choose them over, I would still choose that over Trump. I think there's like a relief that Biden's not in the running anymore. And, uh...

One thing that struck me talking with young, left-of-center voters like Alex, Katie, and Connor is that none of them used the word "excited" to talk about the election, even though they all said they were going to vote for Harris.

More hopeful about the Democrats' chance for victory, sure, but still not excited. The same could be said of Kennedy's supporters as they came around to voting for Trump. To an extent, though, that doesn't matter. A vote is a vote, whether it's cast reluctantly or with enthusiasm. My biggest takeaway from talking with voters in Nevada is that the battle for the unenthusiastic, trying to cajole or push your tepid supporters to the polls, is as important as the campaign for the undecided.

There are still plenty of people who aren't wild about this election, even though the candidates have changed. I thought about that when talking with John McCauley, who I met in a Home Depot parking lot. He's a 63-year-old software executive who said he came to Reno 16 years ago from California, in part because he didn't like the Golden State's left-leaning politics. John is voting for Trump, but he said his kids will vote for Harris.

And he said some of his neighbors will be the big drivers of the election. I mean, I live in a relatively conservative-ish neighborhood, so no one put signs up. No one. No one wants to aggravate anybody. Trump needs to get the marginal voter out. I see it with friends and acquaintances. If they do, he'll win. If they don't, she'll probably win. But, you know, it's always about turnout, right? Always. Chasing the Vote is part of The Wall Street Journal's What's News.

This episode was produced by Ariana Osberu and Jess Jupiter. Sound design by Michael LaValle. He also wrote our theme music. Editorial oversight from Joshua Jamerson, Falana Patterson, Ben Pershing, Scott Salloway, and Chris Zinsley. I'm Jimmy Vilkind, and I'll be back soon with another installment of Chasing the Vote. Thanks for listening.

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