Cross-posted at GOTVegas, where my wife, sister-in-law, and I are blogging about putting our Oakland, Ca lives on hold and spending 2 weeks volunteering for Barack in Clark County, NV.
Voting began yesterday all across Nevada, and according to the early numbers, turnout is already massive and unprecedented.
First, some general statistics. Nevada has just shy of 1.5 million registered voters, more than half of which (807k) are in Clark County (where Las Vegas is). Washoe County (Reno and Sparks) is the only other county in the state with more than 100k registered voters, with 231k. Clark and Washoe Counties contain more than 2/3 of Nevada's registered voters.
Going into the 2004 election, Republicans had approximately 4,400 more registered voters than Democrats. Bush won Nevada by 21,500 votes in 2004.
Going into the 2008 election, Democrats now hold an edge of 110,000 registered voters in the state. In Clark County, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by 127,000. Needless to say, Clark is the make it or break it county for Obama. If Clark County votes, Obama wins Nevada. In Washoe County, there are 1,300 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Nearly everywhere else in the state, Republicans hold large registration leads, but remember that "everywhere else" is only 1/3 of Nevada's population.
Now for the good stuff. In 2004, 14,204 people voted on the first day of early voting. Yesterday, 25,105 Clark County residents cast a ballot, besting the 2004 record by more than 76%. Incredible.
Day one totals for Washoe county aren't available yet from the county election department, but Voter Registrar Dan Burk told the AP that at 1 pm, with polls open for only 3 hours, 3,000 Washoe-ians (?) had already cast a ballot. Day to day numbers aren't available from 2004, but just 34,061 residents voted in the entire 2 week early voting period. Needless to say, Washoe County also had a record setting day. (I'll update this diary when Washoe reports its day one totals.)
What about the rest of the state? Two things: 1) Almost every other county is too small to provide a website where they post any numbers (and the state does not provide statewide daily data, at least that I can find) and 2) Areas outside Clark and Washoe contain a fairly small percentage of Nevada's voters. If Clark and Washoe vote, Barack Obama wins.
So far, Clark and Washoe are voting like they've never voted before. And as ThatPoshGirl reports in the comments, lines were long in other parts of the state as well.
One final note: last night at about 11:06 pm, as reported in Califlander's diary, Clark County posted day one totals that showed 25,592 people had voted. About an hour later, the vote totals were reset to zero, and a few minutes after that, revised numbers were posted that showed the current 25,105 figure. 487 votes "vanished". I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation for this, and I've emailed the Clark County elections department to politely ask for that perfectly good explanation. I'll let you know when I get a response.
UPDATE #1 - I found a more current update on the Washoe County vote totals. At 5 pm yesterday, 6,125 people had voted. That's 18% of the entire early vote total from 2004, and there were still a couple hours left of open polls. Amazing stuff.