This is a continuation of a diary series I started two days ago that nobody reads because I keep posting them at midnight Pacific. - Final Update: Fail. Thanks for all the recs and kind words. Goodnight, at last!
Ready for an infusion of hope after a tremendous polling day (not to mention pretty charts)? Hit the jump.
Washoe County (Reno/Sparks) takeaways:
- More Washoe residents have voted in the first six days of early voting in 2008 than did in the entire early voting period (14 days) in 2004.
- Democrats only hold a 1,286 registered voter lead in Washoe, but 7,161 more Democrats have voted than Republicans thus far.
- There are a total of 231,470 registered voters in Washoe. 15.4% of them have already voted, not even counting absentee voters.
Clark County (Las Vegas) takeaways:
- 807,271 voters are registered in Clark County. 16.9% have already voted.
- Democrats outnumber Republicans 382,807 to 259,975 (122,832 more), or by a 1.47:1 ratio.
- Democrats have out-voted Republicans 2.08:1 thus far in Clark.
General takeaways:
- More than 2/3 of Nevada's registered voters live in Clark and Washoe counties.
- Democrats outnumber Republicans by 124,118 in Clark and Washoe. Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 14,000 everywhere else in the state.
- If Obama wins in landslides (or anything approaching landslides) in Clark and Washoe, it is nearly impossible for John McCain to win Nevada.
- So far, unless some huge percentage of independents or inexplicable percentage of Democrats is voting for McCain, Obama is winning in a landslide in Clark and Washoe.
Final anecdotal note: tonight, after we spent the afternoon canvassing in Vegas, my wife and I decided to do a couple of hours of phone banking before calling it a day. We arrived at the Sunset office to find that every single phone was already occupied by a volunteer.
They're not stopping or getting complacent in Vegas. Neither should you. GOTV!
All of the data presented above is available at various locations on the Clark and Washoe county election department websites.
Substantive Update from hekebolos in the comments:
for those who are wondering why only Washoe County and Clark County are being counted here, it's because those two counties contained 85% of Nevada's voters in 2004. This will probably increase come 2008 because Nevada's city population (Reno and Las Vegas + suburbs, respectively) will have increased in population more than the outlying areas of the state.
The outlying counties gave Bush 66.9% of the vote in 2004. Assuming that percentage holds roughly the same in 2008, Obama would need to win only 53% of the combined Washoe County + Clark County vote to take the state.
Seems like that's well within reach based on the current vote by registration numbers.
UPDATE: Hey! First recommended diary. Thanks folks!
I'm getting some good suggestions for making the charts clearer/more detailed, so I'll implement those changes for tomorrow's edition.
Just two dudes on the Rec List:
UPDATE 3: I'm currently updating the charts to show % Dems, % Reps, and % Others in the daily vote totals. Check back in a few minutes to see the newer, prettier, bigger charts.
UPDATE 4: Charts updated. Enjoy.
Update 5: Several of you have asked in the comments about the trends among independents in Nevada, since so many Nevadans are registered independent. So far, all I've found is this from the 10/19 Politico/Insider Advantage poll:
Statewide in Nevada, the candidates are statistically tied among both [independents and women], with McCain posting a surprising, if narrow lead among female voters.
That may be the one bit of not-so-great news in this diary. If someone can get a hold of the latest Rasmussen poll subscription-only internals, I'd love to see what they have to say about independents.
Update 7
rblinne posted the Rasmussen internals in the comments. Obama is pulling 51% of Independents to McCain's 37%, so Ras has Obama doing much better with indies than the IA poll. Ras also has Obama taking 13% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats. McCain gets 87% of Republicans and only 9% of Democrats.
Lets have some fun with these numbers. First, lets assume the remaining undecided Independents in the poll split 75/25 in McCain's favor (I'm a pessimist). That puts Independents at 54% Obama, 46% McCain. Lets then assume that the 3% of undecided Democrats go 2% for McCain, 1% for Obama (I'm a serious pessimist), so 89% Obama, 11% McCain.
Using those numbers, for entertainment purposes only, the vote totals would be:
Clark County -
Obama: 85,452 (62.7%)
McCain: 50,886 (37.3%)
Washoe County -
Obama: 21,024 (59.1%)
McCain: 14,539 (40.9%)