After 2 weeks of canvassing, phone banking, and mailer preparing, the time has finally come for my wife, sister-in-law and I to say goodbye to Sin City and the Obama campaign here and head home to Oakland to work on No on 8. We have a 10 hour drive ahead of us tomorrow, but we also have The Audacity of Hope on audiobook, so time will fly.
But leaving the Silver State doesn't mean I won't be keeping a close eye on early vote numbers in Nevada. I'll have another diary each and every day for you through the end of Nevada's early voting period on the 31st.
Today was yet another massive turnout day. 9,299 votes in Washoe County today, when only 34k people early voted in all of 2004!? I love the smell of change in the evening.
Percentage of DINEVN diaries to make the Rec List: 28.6%. Welcome to the George W. Bush of daily diary series!
Get your daily numbers fix below...
But first! One of the Obama field organizers here in Vegas, R.J., was celebrating his birthday today. R.J. is awesome, so we got up early this morning and made him a vegan Barack Obirthday cake!
Happy Birthday, R.J.!
Okay, okay. Numbers:
Today was the final day to request an absentee ballot in Nevada, so we should get some solid "absentee ballots requested" data in the next day or two.
Clark County (Las Vegas/Henderson) takeaways:
- More people have now voted early in 2008 than voted early in 2004, and we still have 3 more days to go. If voting patterns from 2004 hold, at least 100,000 people will vote in the final 3 days this year.
- 807,271 voters are registered in Clark County. 38.0% have already voted.
- Democrats outnumber Republicans 382,807 to 259,975 (122,832 more), or by a 1.47:1 ratio. Democrats have out-voted Republicans 1.65:1 thus far in Clark.
- 37.9% of registered Democrats have voted compared to 32.9% registered Republicans.
- We did see the smallest percent increase against 2004 of any early voting day today (32.8%). Still, the ratio of Dems:Repubs continued to be excellent.
Washoe County (Reno/Sparks) takeaways:
- The margins between Democrats and Republicans voting on a daily basis are narrower than they were this time last week, but there hasn't been a single day where Republicans out-voted Democrats. This, in a county where Democrats outnumber Republicans by just 1,286.
- 34,061 Washoe residents voted in the 14 day early voting period in 2004. 68,258 have voted in 11 of 14 days this year.
- There are a total of 231,470 registered voters in Washoe. 29.5% of them have already voted, not counting absentee voters. (Approximately 9% more have requested absentee ballots.)
- About 7,000 more Repubicans have requested absentee ballots than Democrats. Absentee voters will very likely narrow the overall early vote gap in Washoe significantly. This is reflected in the projections below.
Great, but what do you think the actual vote totals are?
Much of the percentage dips for Obama today come from the update from +4000 to +7000 Republican absentee voters in Washoe.
Why just Clark and Washoe?
87% of Nevada's registered voters live in Clark+Washoe. The other 13% are very red, but if Obama can carry ~53+% of Clark+Washoe, he'll win Nevada.
What about other states
You'll have to look elsewhere for analysis (one Kossack can only do so much), but here's a snapshot glimpse at a handful of other early voting states:
Thanks for all the good times, good conversations, and good votes, Las Vegas! We'll miss you. Do us a favor and stay blue.
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