LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — The ballots have been counted in the 2024 election and the winners are known— but what else can we learn from the balloting that just wrapped up?
Here are 13 takeaways from the 2024 election:
1. Trump won, because Harris lost. But not in the way you’re thinking.
President-elect Donald Trump has amassed 75.5 million votes so far, about 50.2% nationally. Vice President Kamala Harris, by contrast, got 72.4 million votes nationwide, or 48.1%.
In 2020, President Joe Biden was elected with 81.2 million votes— 8.8 million more than his vice president earned this time around. Trump did slightly better than he did four years ago with 74.2 million.
These numbers show that millions more people who voted for Biden in 2020 stayed home or voted for a candidate other than Harris this time around— a deficit that cost her the election.
It also means that Biden remains, for now at least, the highest vote-getting president of all time in terms of raw numbers.
2. Build that wall? Trump demolished that wall.
In 2020, Biden won by flipping the “blue wall” states that voted for Trump in 2016 back to Democrats in 2020. Biden won Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona: all states Trump had captured four years before.
This time, Trump took them all back, and then some: He won in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada. Along with swing North Carolina, it was a clean sweep for Republicans in all the swing states.
3. In Nevada at least, this was a Trump victory, not a Republican victory.
Trump beat Harris here by more than 46,000 votes, a larger actual vote margin than Hillary Clinton in 2016 (she beat Trump by 27,202) or Biden in 2020 (he beat Trump by 33,596).
That strength at the top of the ticket did not trickle down. For example, Senate candidate Sam Brown earned more than 73,000 fewer votes than Trump statewide. Republican challengers in Southern Nevada’s three congressional districts all lost, including Drew Johnson in Congressional District 3, despite endorsing Trump early on.
The state Senate stayed exactly the same, although two seats changed parties, and Republicans gained a single seat in the Assembly.
That could be a slim reed of hope for Democrats because while Trump won the state, the popular vote and the Electoral College, he didn’t pass that success down to other Republicans— even ones that he endorsed. Since there is no other Republican politician who even comes close to Trump in popularity in the GOP field, the race four years from now will start from scratch, rather than from the assumption that Nevada is a red state up and down the ballot.
In Nevada, Trump easily exceeded his 2020 total, winning more than 78,000 more votes in the state than he did four years ago. Trump’s percentages swung from 47.7% in 2020 compared to 50.6% this year— a shift of almost 3 percentage points. He really beat his 2016 performance, when he earned 45.5 percent of the vote.
4. Crowded ballots hurt Republican candidates.
Brown lost the U.S. Senate seat to Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosenby more than 23,000 votes. But it wasn’t just a two-person match-up. Also on the ballot was Independent American Party candidate Janine Hansen, who earned more than 21,000 votes, and Libertarian Chris Cunningham, who got more than 20,700 votes.
Both the Independent American Party and the Libertarian Party are more conservative than the GOP, so it’s reasonable to assume that if the voters who cast ballots for Hansen and Cunningham didn’t have those choices, some of those votes may have gone to Brown.
It’s also reasonable to assume, however, that even if Hansen and Cunningham weren’t on the ballot, voters inclined to vote for them might have skipped the race or voted for None of These Candidates instead. But even if Brown got half of the votes that went to third parties, he wouldn't have won.
5. “None” had a good night.
Speaking of Nevada’s unique “None of These Candidates” ballot option, many voters took the opportunity to say they didn’t like any of the candidates on the ballot. In the presidential race, None came in third with more than 19,000 votes; not enough to affect the outcome but enough to beat the Libertarian and Independent American candidates.
In the Senate race, None took third as well, with more than 44,000 votes— again beating two human candidates by a more than a 2-to-1 margin. (None’s votes could also have put Brown over the top.)
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None also got about 30% of the vote in three statewide Supreme Court races, in which the incumbent justices were running unopposed.
Even if none wins a majority, under Nevada law, the highest human vote-getter wins the election.
6. Incumbents go back to Washington.
All four of Nevada’s congressional delegation members will return to Washington, D.C., which is good for Nevada.
Second District Congressman Mark Amodei, a Republican, will return to a GOP majority, where he’s already a “cardinal,” or chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee of the powerful Ways & Means Committee.
Democratic 1st District Congresswoman Dina Titus will return as ranking member of the subcommittee on economic development, public buildings and emergency management subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
Democratic 3rd District Congresswoman Susie Lee – who won re-election by the closest margin in the Nevada delegation with 51% to 48% for her Republican challenger, Drew Johnson – has announced a bid for Battleground Leadership Representative, a position she created in 2022 to ensure members from swing districts have a seat at the table.
And Democrat Steven Horsford of the 4th District will return to wrap up his term as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
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7. New (red) blood on the Clark County Commission
April Becker, who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate in 2020 and Congress in 2022, will become the first Republican to sit on the all-Democrat commission since Chip Maxfield left back in 2008.
To win the seat left vacant by Ross Miller, who opted not to seek re-election, Becker defeated Democratic former Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod.
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Signs in the district reminded voters of a long-ago scandal in which Bilbray-Axelrod registered as a foreign agent on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to lobby against a bill that would have allowed the families of people killed on Sept. 11, 2001, to sue the government of Saudi Arabia. The bill was also opposed by the administration of then-President Barack Obama.
The revelation never hurt Bilbray-Axelrod in her safe Assembly seat, and she rose to chair the Education Committee in the lower house. But it came back to haunt her with signs dubbing her “Saudi Shannon,” leading to Becker’s more than 8,000-vote victory in District C.
8. Governor Joe Lombardo didn’t do too badly, either.
Republican Lombardo was not on the ballot this year, but plenty of his endorsed candidates were.
Lombardo-backed candidates won in a little more than half of the races, most notably state Senate District 11, where Lori Rogich unseated incumbent Democrat Dallas Harris, and in Assembly District 35, where Dr. Rebecca Edgeworth flipped the seat from Democrat to Republican. (The incumbent, Michelle Gorelow, chose not to run for re-election after it was revealed she’d voted for a state grant to a nonprofit for which Gorelow worked.)
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But other Lombardo endorsees – including Brown, congressional hopeful John Lee, and a handful of Assembly choices – lost their races. That includes Rafael Arroyo in Assembly District 41, where Lombardo has feuded with incumbent Democrat Sandra Jauregui, who will be returning to Carson City.
Most important to Lombardo: Although the Senate will remain 13-8 in favor of Democrats, the Assembly will now be 27-15, which means both houses are one vote shy of a supermajority, leaving Lombardo’s veto pen and negotiating power intact.
9. Legislative leaders won, but not by much.
Taking out a legislative leader is a feather in the cap of any political party. It didn’t happen this time, but not for lack of trying.
Consider:
- State Sen. Nicole Cannizzaro, the majority leader, won her seat comfortably by more than 4,300 votes in a three-person race, with Republican Jill Douglass and Independent American Party candidate Brad Lee Barnhill. Had Barnhill not filed, that race could have been closer.
- Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager eked out a win by more than 700 votes over Republican Erika Neely, in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 2,000 voters.
- Assembly Majority Leader Jauregui was initially losing to Arroyo until mail ballots were counted and unsigned ballots were cured, finally ending up with a victory by fewer than 300 votes.
10. More actual votes than ever, but turnout lagged.
More than 1.48 million people cast ballots in the general election, but turnout was the second lowest in the past 25 years.
Just 72.5% of Nevada’s more than 2 million registered voters cast a ballot by mail or in person in this year’s election, beating the previous low of 70.15% set in 2000 when George W. Bush went up against Al Gore.
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Tt was a far cry from the all-time high turnout of 80.77% set in 2012 when Barack Obama ran for re-election against Mitt Romney.
11.Republican turnout was the highest in a decade.
Democrats usually outpoll Republicans in Nevada, which accounts for the fact that, until this year, a presidential candidate from the GOP hasn’t won the state since 2004.
But this year, more than 523,000 Republicans cast ballots, compared with more than 490,000 Democrats. That’s even though currently, there are almost 10,000 more active registered Democrats in Nevada than Republicans.
The last time GOP turnout overwhelmed the Democrats was in the “red tide” of 2014, in which Republicans captured the governor’s mansion, all constitutional offices and both houses of the Legislature.
12. Thousands of flawed ballots cured.
All told, more than 32,000 mail-in ballots were missing a signature or the signature on the ballot didn’t match the one on file in the county elections office.
When that happens, the county tries to contact the affected voter, so they can “cure” their ballot by proving their identity and eligibility. And when the dust settled, that number had been whittled down to just more than 9,100 uncured ballots, meaning the vast majority – more than 23,000 – had been fixed and the votes counted.
The remainder accounted for just about 1.3 percent of all votes cast in the general election.
13. Why Nevada?
Nevada is the smallest of the swing states, both in terms of population (3.1 million people, more than 2 million of whom are active registered voters) and in terms of Electoral College votes (just 6).
So why is Nevada at the center of the political universe every four years?
First, we’ve shown that we are truly a “swing” state, moving back and forth between Republicans (George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, Trump in 2024) and Democrats (Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2020). Both Republicans and Democrats have run the state in the past two decades.
Second, we are high on the nominating calendar for presidential candidates, a gift from the late Sen. Harry Reid, who got Nevada moved up so Democratic candidates, at least, would have to show they could win in a western, diverse, union-heavy enclave with both rural and urban voters. If you can win here, you can win anywhere, Reid reasoned.
Third, while Nevada is on the other side of the country from most of the other swing states, it’s close to fundraising-rich California, which means candidates can combine visits to raise money in the Golden State with campaign stops here, or in neighboring swing-state Arizona.
And fourth, at No. 40, Las Vegas’s media market is more affordable than many of the other swing states, including Philadelphia (No. 4), Atlanta (No. 6), Phoenix (No. 11), Detroit (No. 14), Minneapolis-St. Paul (No. 15), Charlotte, N.C. (No. 21) and Pittsburgh, Penn. (No. 26).