Jon Ralston (Nevada prediction)

Ralston is considered the ultimate Nevada election guru and is predicting a 0.3% win for Harris (or about 4000 votes or so).

Now before we go any further, apparently Ralston has never actually predicted a Republican to win in that state, and according to his own words, he still trusts the (Harry) Reid Machine to continue to win the Presidency even as he admits that the numbers may not justify it.

One thing about Nevada is that early and mail in voting dominate the state. Right now it would appear that 70% of the overall vote is already been returned and as it stands, the GOP holds (for the first time ever) a 43,000 early vote partisan advantage (which if it holds is about a 3% win in Nevada). That suggests that between the mail-in votes that have not been delivered and the election day vote, that there is about 400,000 or so ballots left to be accounted for.

I won’t repeat a lot of my analysis of this – you can read it on the blog — that concludes Trump probably has a 30,000 raw vote lead right now. But my theory of the case is there are still a lot of Clark County mail ballots to be counted that favor Democrats and the GOP partial cannibalization of its Election Day vote will propel some Democrats to victory but perhaps not quite get there with others. Which is which?

The key to this election has always been which way the non-major-party voters break because they have become the plurality in the state. They are going to make up 30 percent or so of the electorate and if they swing enough towards Harris, she will win Nevada. I think they will, and I’ll tell you why: Many people assume that with the GOP catching up to the Democrats in voter registration that the automatic voter registration plan pushed by Democrats that auto-registers people as nonpartisans (unless they choose a party) at the DMV had been a failure for the party. But I don’t think so. There are a lot of nonpartisans who are closet Democrats who were purposely registered by Democrat-aligned groups as nonpartisans. The machine knows who they are and will get them to vote.

So I am not really sure what to make of this, other than the fact that Ralston appears to be suggesting that the Harris and the Democrats will erase this 30,000 vote deficit in part by winning the election day vote for the first time since... well since Nevada went mostly mail in and early vote.

Oh, and since when in a three way formula (R,D,I) does 30% make up a plurality? Does he not understand what a plurality is? Ahem... But I digress.

He hedged with the Clark county mail in ballots comments (which is a staple every year for Ralston so much so that people were mocking it in anticipation of his prediction) but really has to believe that Democrats will carry the election day vote. He cannot possibly suggest that Clark county will make up both a 30,000 vote deficit added to an election day loss for Harris and the Democrats with just the ballots left to come in over the next few days from Clark. Clark is the one county that votes Democrat, but it is only about a 55-45 advantage at best. That seems like a steep climb.

Even in suggesting that the 43,000 vote GOP advantage will be whittled down by the independent early vote, he seems to be suggesting that there is going to be some sort of new surge of Democrats registering as Independents that will show up on election day and pull Kamala over the edge. After all the Reid Machine knows where these voters are and will go get them? I guess if they did, then why wouldn't they already have voted, given the Democratic GOTV efforts in Nevada are 90% about early and mail in votes? He also mentions cross-over votes, but there is no history of this in Nevada (not even in 2020).

So perhaps his 30,000 number already includes these Democrats dressed up as independents and his so-called crossover votes. To be fair, Biden won independents in this state by a six percent margin, but the partisan breakdown in 2020 was evenly spit between GOP and Democrats in that election. I don't know that the same can be expected in 2024, especially given the surge of new registrations and early voters from the GOP side. So perhaps another 6% independent advantage may or may not win the race, but right now it doesn't look like Democrats are going to be voting in equal numbers to the GOP without a big election day turnout from their side. This is something that Ralston seems to concede, which is why he is banking on independents and crossover voters.

So given how much Ralston understands about Nevada and given the reach he seems to be making to predict a win for Harris, it might be fair to say that 0.3% is not his over/under for this race. It may be closer to his best case scenario for Harris. On the flip side, if the GOP does win the election day vote and there really are not another 100,000 democrat heavy mail in ballots left to be counted from Clark, then perhaps this 30,000 vote lead is right around the over/under (or about a 2% win for Trump).

I feel like if we work back from there, we can look at the polling and wonder out loud if the two polls (Susquehanna and Atlas) showing Trump winning by six are bigger outliers than the NYT/Siena poll which shows Harris winning by three. I certainly feel that if the numbers in this state (which again are 70% plus already banked) justified a three percent victory for Harris, that Ralston would have found a way to predict it, rather than the obvious hedge prediction that the race is knotted up (not because of any numbers, but because of more of a gut feeling).