How Early Nevada Voting Compares With 2020 as Democrats Try to Hold Seat

Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto is one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the U.S.

The first Latina in the U.S. Senate, she is facing a tough challenge from Republican Adam Laxalt, the former Nevada attorney general backed by Donald Trump. A loss for Cortez Masto could cost Democrats control of the Senate.

Additionally, Nevada's three House races are also competitive, meaning the state's early voting numbers are under close scrutiny.

A two-week period of early voting in Nevada kicked off on Saturday. Much of the focus is on Clark County, the most populous in Nevada. It includes Las Vegas and has about 1.3 million registered voters.

So far, early in-person turnout has been low, with about 30,000 voters casting ballots in Clark County, according to John Samuelsen, a science and technology administrator at the University of Arkansas.

More than 41,000 mail ballots have been cast: about 20,000 from registered Democrats, compared to about 10,600 from Republicans. The rest were cast by non-affiliated or third-party voters.

Overall, Democrats are up by 6,488 votes in the county.

"Early in-person votes in Clark County, Nevada are significantly down from 2020," Samuelsen told Newsweek.

There were over 79,000 votes already recorded after the third day of early voting in 2020, he said, but in 2022, only about 31,000 votes have been recorded—a 60 percent decrease.

"This is well beyond what should be expected for the normal decrease we see between Presidential election years and midterms," Samuelsen said. "Even the prior midterm, 2018, had over 83,000 votes by the same day. However, that was before mail became universal in Nevada."

The most likely reason for such a strong drop in early in-person turnout is that "a higher proportion of people are planning on voting by mail this year compared to 2020," Samuelsen said.

"My understanding is that when states move to universal mail, it can take an election or two for people to adopt the practice at higher rates."

But the number of mail ballots that have been processed is also down from 2020.

"At the equivalent point in time there were over 127,000 mail ballots accounted for in 2020. Right now, there are just over 41,000 that have been processed in 2022," he said.

Although that could be interpreted to mean turnout is "way down," Samuelson believes that analysis is incorrect.

"I checked the Nevada SOS website and it turns out that Clark County didn't need to mail out ballots until October 19 in 2022," he said.

"By contrast, mail ballots were already showing up in the reporting data as returned by October 12 in 2020. So it appears that the main issue with the different mail ballot turnout is actually just that the ballots have taken longer to get to voters. I expect to see significant numbers of mail ballots returned in the coming days. Possibly, there will be enough to make up for a portion of the drop in the early in-person votes."

Jon Ralston of the Nevada Independent noted in a blog post that the drop in in-person early voting could also be because of bad weather.

"Turnout is way down. Some of it—much of it maybe—may be because of inclement weather in Clark County over the weekend," he wrote. "But it also may be true that even more voters—Democrats, Republicans and non-major party voters—will vote by mail this cycle."

Mail balloting is "also way down, although we have to consider that they may just be counting it slower this cycle," Ralston added. "It's always hard to tell. But in 2020, the first batch was more than 100,000; the first one this cycle is about 40,000."

About 580,000 mail ballots were returned and accepted in Nevada in 2020, with 48.3 percent cast by registered Democrats and 25.9 percent by registered Republicans, according to the U.S. Elections Project.

Approximately 543,000 in-person votes were cast during early voting in the state that same year, with 46.1 percent cast by Republicans and 30.5 percent by Democrats.

Update 10/26/22, 5:50 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from John Samuelsen.