John Ralston is a fairly independent pundit in this state and he usually has a very good insight into Nevada Politics.
He has a post up with a quick and dirty analysis of the numbers for Nevada's first day of early voting. Clark County numbers here.
The numbers reported for Sunday are pretty good too. Not quite as good as 2008, but we're building that firewall in Clark.
The SoS has the raw numbers here.
Follow below the squiggly!
The early-vote numbers show a 26 percent edge in Clark County and 10 percent in Washoe County. That's about a 10,000-vote lead in Washoe and Clark combined.
The Clark numbers: 55-29, or 18,388-9,588 (Actual registration: 46-31)
The Washoe numbers: 48-38, or 4,604-3,619 (Actual registration: 38-38)
From another of his
posts:
Let's suppose Republicans have a 5 percentage point turnout edge over Democrats (85 percent to 80 percent) once all the votes are counted and that "other" voters turn out at an 80 percent clip (that may be high). Let's suppose 85 percent of each base votes for the nominee (it's likely to be closer to 90 percent) and let's suppose the third-party candidates get 3 percent of the vote (it's unlikely to be much higher, based on history). That's a fairly conservative model.
Because of the Democrats' registration edge -- 90,000 statewide -- that means Romney would have to win all of those remaining voters by about 13 percent.
And guess what? No credible poll is showing that. Indeed, not one public poll has shown anything close to that -- even GOP-skewed Rasmussen, which had a 39-36, GOP sample (nearly impossible), had Obama up by 9 among indies. Many polls show Obama up among unaffiliated voters.
If that holds up (and like Ralston says one day doesn't make for a trend) then Nevada will most likely fall into Obama's column.
Another thing to keep in mind is Obama was vastly underpolled here in 2008, and Reid defied most of the pollsters in 2010 by a large amount. Our transient population along with a very high hispanic population simply makes polling exceptionally difficult.
Reid's pollster, the only one to show him ahead in 2010, has Obama up quite a bit(warning, docx file) (and Berkley as well, for Senate). Poopdogcomedy has a really in depth diary here on the Berkley race.
Wifey and I are voting on Tuesday. I have Tuesday and Wednesdays off from work so I don't have to take time off, but I prefer early voting to try to avoid long lines on election day.