Jon Summers
Communications Director
Nevada State Democratic Party
Phone: 702-737-VOTE
Cell: 702-300-4566
www.nvdems.com
Clark County voters continue to ignore my admonitions against early voting in record numbers -- 24,667 voted Wednesday, a new daily standard. The early voting total is 207,619 and the mail ballot total is 38,644 -- the aggregate is 246,623. So 300,000 is a real possibility by the end of early voting,
which would be close to 45 percent of Clark County's registered voters and well over half of who will vote in the election.
The Democrats continue to extend their lead down here -- it is now at about 8,700 voters in Clark County:
Democrats--109,759 (44.4 percent)
Republicans--101,025 (40.9 percent)
Others--36,005 (14.7 percent)
So Republicans continue to vote at about 3 percent above their registration numbers in Clark County, so the Democrats will still need a surge on Election Day. In Washoe, the latest numbers show the Republicans have only a 70-voter lead with almost 26,000 ballots cast.
My own Commentary:
Chris Bowers made the comment on my diary that "The Clark county numbers are actually not good enough for Kerry to win the state. He needs to win Clark buy 7-9 points. However, the Reno numbers are more than enough for Kerry to win the state. Kerry might end up winning Nevada thoruhg an unepected strategy: not as strong as needed in Clark, but much better than expected in Reno."
The is a perfect analysis of the situation. While we do need to pick up at least 3-4 % in Clark, we are up by 7-8% over our normal registration in Washoe and doing very well in smaller Northern Centres as well. So the one is off-setting the other at the moment.
In the whole State (not including some of the most rural, smaller areas), we are continuing a narrow lead of 1,500 Dems over Repugs in votes cast with about 15% Independents inbetween.
So the State is totally in play and looking good for us. In the end, as noted above it will come down to election day turnout and how the Independents and NP vote falls in the end. Big Bill's visit on Friday should also help as well.
My guess is that it will be another very close "2000 New Mexico-like situation", so we will be flat out to bring every possible voter so we can just squeak over the line, and I am sure we will as we are holding the fort well in the South and just smashing them in the North.