Battleground Nevada

Donald Trump was in Reno on Saturday, but the Republicans almost certainly lost Nevada on Friday.

Trump’s path was nearly impossible before what happened in Clark County on Friday. But now he needs a Miracle in Vegas on Election Day — and a Buffalo Bills Super Bowl championship is more likely — to turn this around. The ripple effect down the ticket probably will cost the Republicans Harry Reid’s Senate seat, two GOP House seats and control of the State Legislature.

The Nevada Secretary Of State now has a cumulative early vote turnout page up.

Let me remind you of the math: Trump would need to be holding 90 percent of the GOP base and Clinton would have to be losing 15–20 percent of hers and he would have to be winning indies for him to be competitive. Let me be clear: None of those things are likely.

The Reid machine and the Hillary campaign did not spend two weeks turning out crossover voters. They know what they are doing. Trump is probably down 12–15 points in Clark County and 65–70,000 votes. You can’t make that up unless Election Day turnout is so large and so GOP-heavy that he could. And with two-thirds of the vote in, and with Democrats not simply willing to roll over and not rev up the machine on Election Day, that ain’t happening.

The total votes cast so far — 770,000 — are well above 2012 after early/mail voting — 705,000. But because of all the new voters — 200,000 of them — the raw vote lead statewide is down from 2012 (Clark is slightly higher) and the percentage edge is about 2 points lower. The GOP has less than a 1 percent turnout advantage, which is on par with 2012.

But votes are votes. And if the Clark County firewall is what I think it is, and Clinton has a 70,000 vote lead when those first numbers pop up on Election Night, it’s game over. Indeed, 60,000 might be enough. Why? Because the best Trump can hope for is to win rural Nevada by 50,000 votes. And that would be HUGE — Romney won the rurals by about 40,000 votes. In Washoe, where the Dems have a 1,000-vote ballot lead now, that would mean Trump would have to win Washoe fairly decisively and reduce the Clark margin, which actually is likely to grow, on Election Day.

Look at it another way:

Let’s be conservative and say two-thirds of the vote is in — it was 70 percent in 2012 and turnout is down this year. That means there are roughly about 385,000 votes left. Let’s say Trump did the impossible and won Election Day by 10 points — 50–40. That would be 192,000 to 154,000, or 38,000 votes. He would probably still lose.

And the chances of Trump winning election day by 10 points are about the same as Billy Bush anchoring the CBS Evening News.

In the Senate race, Joe Heck probably would have to win Election Day by only half as much. But winning Tuesday by 5 points is a daunting task. The Heckophiles are on Twitter making comparisons to 2012 and using the lower lead percentages for the Democrats as a sign that Heck can pull a Dean Heller. Maybe. But private data I have seen belies it, and it would be a disaster for Catherine Cortez Masto and the Reid Machine if that occurred.

The Democratic strategy of building up a registration advantage, especially in Clark County, then banking votes in in early voting has worked in the last two cycles. There is no reason to think it won’t this time, and there is no reason to believe the Democratic machine won’t work on Election Day, too.

Republicans may be right that they can get higher turnout on Tuesday. But that’s what they said in 2012, and Democrats won Election Day by 12,000 votes.

And consider this: Latino vote was a higher than usual percentage of the early vote — more than 13 percent. But many Hispanics don’t like to vote early, and that means many will vote Tuesday, which is a real problem for Republicans. In five of the six highest Latino precincts, early turnout was up from ’12, too. It’s up 30 percent from 2012, data mavens tell me. We will see if it’s more voting early or if it continues Tuesday.

I think the GOP will gain ground tomorrow. But Clinton is too far ahead, I’d guess, and Cortez Masto may be, too, for it to make a difference.

I could be wrong about Donald Trump losing Nevada only if voters behaved very differently during early voting than they usually do. That is, unlike 2008 and 2012, many of those Democrats were voting for Trump and Hillary Clinton is losing by a substantial margin among indies.

I’d guess that right now, based on history and my sources:

• Trump is down by at least 40,000 votes.
• About 770,000 votes have been cast, likely two-thirds of the vote.
• Let’s suppose that there is an Election Day turnout of 450,000 voters. Trump would probably need to win Tuesday by about 10 points to win.
• This is almost impossible, unless the Democrats decide not to turn out voters on Election Day.

One more hopeful scenario for Trump includes large rural turnout:

In 2012, 165,000 votes were cast in rural Nevada. Romney won the rurals by 40,000 votes, or 25 percent. About 100,000 already have voted in the rurals. Let’s suppose Trump has a 30,000-vote lead already, which is generous. Could he add 20,000 votes on Election Day? That would be spectacular, but not impossible. So say he has a 50,000-vote lead.

That would mean the Democrats would have to win Washoe and Clark by under 50,000 votes. The 2012 numbers: Barack Obama won those two counties by a combined 107,000 votes. So Clinton would have to do less than half as well as Obama did. Less than half.

I repeat: Trump is dead here, barring a miracle or anomalies invisible not just to me, or many other experts. (I surveyed 14 smart insiders this weekend. All 14 said Trump loses the state.)