VICTOR JOECKS: Democrat scheme boosts Trump’s odds in Nevada

One of the biggest policy wins for Nevada Democrats now threatens to make the state more Republican. It could even cost President Joe Biden re-election.

On Tuesday, Biden visited Las Vegas. It’s part of a tour through swing states. Despite voting against Donald Trump twice, Nevada certainly qualifies. Polling shows Trump beating Biden here by 5.6 percentage points. Trump’s margin increases if you include third-party candidates. In 2020, Biden beat Trump in Nevada by 2.4 percentage points. All of the caveats of early polling apply, but in 2020, almost all Nevada polls had Biden beating Trump.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. After leveraging the 2008 caucus to boost their voter registration, the Democratic Party looked to be on an unstoppable upswing. Sure, there might be a fluke election, like 2014, or a few Republicans eking out wins statewide. But Nevada’s ever-increasing minority voters would soon make the state blue for good, just like in California. That’s because Hispanics and African Americans have traditionally voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. Plus, the Nevada Democratic Party had better organization and fundraising than the state GOP.

So why is Biden trailing by so much? One possibility is that he is simply a uniquely weak candidate. His age and poor performance certainly hurt him. There’s clip after clip after clip of him looking lost and disoriented when trying to figure out where to walk next. But national polling suggests something deeper is going on, too.

“Democrats are hemorrhaging support with voters of color,” data guru Nate Silver wrote last week.

Aggregated polling data shows Biden is holding steady with white voters. But “Biden is now only winning Hispanics by 7 percentage points — down from 24 points in 2020 — and Black voters by ‘only’ 55 points, as compared with 83 points in 2020,” Silver wrote.

In some states, that might not matter much. In Nevada, it foreshadows a massive realignment.

A decade ago, Democrats could have used their organizational advantages to blunt that shift. Hispanics are less likely to be registered voters. Minority voter turnout usually trails that of white voters. Democrats could have targeted and registered only those voters who favored them. Republicans could have done the same, but Democrats’ money advantage would have given them an edge.

But in 2018, Nevada voters approved an automatic voter registration initiative strongly backed by leftist groups and Democrats. Everyone who goes to the DMV is now automatically registered to vote unless they opt out. There are many problems with this, especially because it can and does result in the registration of noncitizens.

As the DMV registered more nonwhite voters, the theory went, Democrats would naturally gain a big edge. Except that didn’t happen. In December 2018, Nevada Democrats had almost 80,000 more registered voters than Republicans and a 5 percentage point lead in registration. As of March 1, that lead had shrunk to fewer than 33,000 voters and 1.7 percentage points. Today, Democrats have fewer registered voters than they did in 2018. Republicans have gained more than 30,000.

Nevada Democrats thought automatically registering voters would make them unstoppable. Instead, it may put Trump in the White House and turn Nevada red.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.