Yesterday, I introduced absentee voting data (actual for Clark County, estimated for Washoe), developed a projection model that gives us a glimpse of what actual vote totals for Obama and McCain might be (based on good, bad, and moderate scenarios), and made the charts prettier, cleaner, and vastly more detailed.
Today, I got nothin'... except more good news for Barack Obama!
Obama was in Clark and Washoe yesterday holding rallies in Las Vegas and Reno. If those events have any immediate impact on vote totals, we're likely to see the bulk of them in Saturday and Sunday's numbers (though, unfortunately, more than half of Washoe's polling locations are closed on Sundays).
Early voting ends Friday, so this is the last weekend for Nevadans to vote early.
Clark County (Las Vegas) takeaways:
- 807,271 voters are registered in Clark County. 23.3% 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 1.74:1 thus far in Clark.
- Democratic vote totals had been trending downward for several days, but ticked back up yesterday.
Washoe County (Reno/Sparks) takeaways:
- 34,061 Washoe residents voted in the 14 day early voting period in 2004. 48,307 have voted in 8 days this year.
- Democrats only hold a 1,286 registered voter lead in Washoe, but 9,093 more Democrats have voted than Republicans thus far.
- There are a total of 231,470 registered voters in Washoe. 20.9% of them have already voted, not counting absentee voters. (An additional 7.8% have requested absentee ballots.)
- About 4,000 more Repubicans have requested absentee ballots than Democrats. Absentee voters will very likely narrow the overall early vote gap in Washoe significantly. This is reflected in the projections below.
Yes, but what do you think the actual vote totals are?
Why just Clark and Washoe?
87% of Nevada's registered voters live in Clark+Washoe. The other 13% are very red, but if Obama can carry ~53+% of Clark+Washoe, he'll win Nevada.
So it still looks very solid after another big turnout day. Obama likely has a double digit lead in Nevada right now. But it's not over, and the numbers almost certainly will tighten (as they have been, slowly, almost every day). We have 9 more days to knock on doors and dial numbers to make the good news stick.