Nevada Early Blog Updated, 5 PM, 10/13/20
We have some ballot return numbers from urban Nevada, and the Democrats are outpacing the Republicans in Washoe and Clark. But the numbers don’t mean that much because the sample is so small. The rural numbers have been updated, too.
These early mail return numbers seem to indicate that either Republicans here are instructing people not to mail their ballots yet or many partisans are affected by the POTUS scare tactics. Either way, seems awfully risky to put all of your eggs in the Election Day basket. I still think overall turnout will be sky high.
----The Clark surge slowed since I last posted. The Dem lead is at 156,600, with all the usual caveats. That's a gain of 100 since Monday. Let’s see Wednesday if the Republicans are holding them off now or if this is a one-day anomaly.
----That RJ poll released today showing a dead heat is an outlier – I have seen two other credible private polls showing Joe Biden up by double digits. I don’t know if they are correct, but a dead heat it is not in most polls.
The poll has some other anomalies, too – no cell phones called, 13 percent Hispanics. I would still like to plug the internals into the model as I have with the NYT/Siena and CBS polls, but the RJ has not released the crosstabs – or I can’t find them.
The story says President Donald Trump is up 4 among indies – if so, the race is not a dead heat. Biden would still be up a bit, depending on the turnout scenarios, as you can see below from previous modeling.
I’ll repeat what I keep saying: Trump can win here, but we don’t have enough actual votes yet to see where the race is going here. All the credible polling says Biden will win here, but I prefer ballot return and early voting numbers to use for projections.
More when I have it.
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-3