Clark County’s early voting numbers higher than 2018

Thanks to mail-in ballots, more Clark County voters participated in the first weekend of early voting this year than in 2018, with Democrats outpolling Republicans.

Over the weekend, 58,254 voters either voted early or submitted mail-in ballots, a 9.3 percent increase over 2018, when 54,177 turned out in person for early voting. (That was before the Nevada Legislature voted in 2020 to send mail-in ballots to every active registered voter as a pandemic safety measure, and mail balloting comprised a much smaller percentage of the overall vote. Sending mail ballots to all active voters was made permanent during the 2021 Legislature.)

In-person early voting during the first weekend alone accounted for just 19,465 votes, which shows a shift toward the greater use of mail ballots.

While Republicans turned out in greater numbers for in-person early voting, Democrats dominated mail ballots. All told in Clark County, Democrats cast 26,268 ballots, while Republicans cast 18,612. Nonpartisan voters cast 13,374 ballots.

Because of election law changes in the years since 2018, comparing the first weekend of early voting in 2022 to the first weekend in 2018 is like “comparing apples and oranges,” said Dan Lee, a UNLV associate professor of political science.

With Republicans more concerned about election integrity and voter fraud, GOP voters are more likely to vote in person while Democrats are more likely to use mail-in ballots, so the greater numbers of Democrats submitting mail-in ballots is not surprising, Lee said. Democrats handed in 19,005 mail ballots, to Republicans’ 9,948. But Republicans outpolled Democrats in in-person voting, 8,664 to 7,263.

“That’s kind of a pattern that we’re going to see moving forward. Before 2020, there wasn’t a partisan skew in terms of mail-in ballots,” Lee said.

Lee said it’s difficult to predict whether turnout will be higher this year compared with 2018, because 2018 was a “blue wave” year and Democrats — who have more active registered voters in Nevada than Republicans — had more motivation because they wanted to vote against the Trump administration.

This year, a concern is getting Democrats motivated to vote, especially when President Joe Biden is unpopular and the economy is not doing well, Lee said.

“We’d expect voter turnout to be lower this year than in 2018, but now it’s hard to compare with mail-in ballots. It’s easier to vote this year than in 2018,” Lee said.

The first weekend of early vote numbers match what Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said over the weekend, in that the heavy winds affected voter turnout with many people choosing to stay at home, although he said there were a lot of people dropping off mail-in ballots at drop boxes in early voting centers.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on Twitter.