Unproven vs. unfiltered: How undecided voters in Nevada are feeling about their choices

“Unproven.” “Inexperienced.” “Hardworking.” “Thoughtful.” “Animated.”

“Immature.” “Creative.” “Unfiltered.” “Bombastic.” “Brave.”

That’s how a group of undecided voters in Nevada characterize presidential candidates Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, respectively.

With less than a month until the Nov. 5 election, most Nevada voters know who they’ll vote for in the presidential race. Some Nevada voters, however, are still making up their minds — and they’d still like to get more from the candidates.

“I don’t love either candidate, and I kind of feel like the country deserves to have better candidates than we have right now,” said Las Vegas resident Mike Chernine during a focus group the Las Vegas Review-Journal held as part of its partnership with Battleground News.

In about an hourlong conversation, seven independent voters shared their thoughts about the candidates, the top issues facing Nevadans and what they’d like to see from the candidates in order to win their votes.

The voters who participated are part of the group called the Coalition of Independent Nevadans (COIN), which formed in 2022 with the goal of providing a neutral platform for the rising number of nonpartisan voters in the Silver State. The group has been active in interviewing legislative candidates and issued a list of endorsements for Nevada races, though its members differ in where they stand on the presidential race.

An Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey released Thursday found only 2.7 percent of the 900 Nevadans surveyed are still undecided, though 41 percent of those are leaning toward Harris, with 29 percent toward Trump and 30 percent leaning toward voting “none of these candidates” on Nevada’s ballot.

Harris versus Trump

The panel of undecided voters favored Trump for his foreign and economic policies — but not his rhetoric and habit of posting on X, formerly Twitter, late at night. They like Harris’ character, describing her more of a “people’s person,” but many said they don’t know enough about her economic plans and what a Harris administration would look like.

“She’s an unknown, as far as I’m concerned,” said Ash Mirchandani, chair and founder of COIN. “So, I’m trying to find out what she stands for. What are four years or eight years of presidency most likely under her? Where is this country heading?”

Chernine said he likes a lot of Trump’s policies, and he thinks Trump did some good while he was in office, such as expanding some wilderness and increasing penalties for people abusive to animals.

“So there’s some things that he’s willing to step out and speak up on, if you could get rid of the bad parts of his personality and just really could stick to some of the policies,” he said.

He brought up concerns about Harris laughing a lot, saying it looks like she’s not comfortable in her own skin.

“I do believe she loves human beings,” Chernine said. “I believe she’s got a big heart. … I’m looking forward to learning more.”

Debbie Bingham, who works in marketing and PR in Las Vegas, thinks Harris is more moderate and sensible, and can probably get things done better, while Trump is explosive and sometimes a bully.

A few members of the group are leaning toward one candidate but haven’t fully made up their minds.

Las Vegas resident Michelle Chen said she has voted for both parties the last couple of elections, and right now, she’s leaning toward Trump because of his international policies. She hasn’t heard much from Harris on the issue though, so her opinion could change, she said.

Chen said Trump communicates clearly about what he wants, has a kind heart and has taken philanthropic actions, but she did not like his rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic about Asian people.

“That’s something I think, as a leader, he should be cautious about what he can say, and that could trigger people following him to kind of listen and just kind of copy what he said,” she said.

Henderson resident Bart Patterson is leaning toward Harris because he thinks she is reaching out to more people and promoting herself as a president for all the people, rather than engaging in issues like retribution.

“I’m pretty concerned about how divisive politics are, and I don’t see former President Trump as helping that,” he said. “And I think that the character and how you approach situations matters.”

Although Mirchandani is still deciding who he’s going to vote for, he said he doesn’t think either of the candidates are harmful in the way that their opponents make them out to be.

“To me, both the presidential candidates are patriots,” he said. “Let’s get that out of the way. None of them, I don’t think either of them thinks any ill of this country.”

Biggest issues

Education and the economy stood out as the biggest issues at the top of the undecided voters’ minds, though they’re unsure which presidential candidate would do a better job fixing those problems.

Noah Herrera, a real estate agent who lives in Henderson, said his biggest issues are the economy, border, health care and reproductive rights. On the economy, he’s not sure whether Harris or Trump would do a better job. Under Trump, he thinks the economy was moving along until COVID-19 came, but neither Trump nor Biden have done much to lower the country’s debt.

The voters expressed liking both Trump’s and Harris’ plans to end taxes on tips, but they didn’t think it would be the “silver bullet” to fix the economy, Bingham said, who added that there has to be a holistic approach.

“It’s a great initiative,” said Las Vegas resident and attorney Rahul Sodhi. “Anything that helps our living wage workers or a small business, it’s always a great initiative, but at the end, it’s going to come down on your economy and your policies to get the inflation down.”

Bingham said education, health care and housing are issues that need to be addressed immediately, and she thinks Harris can deliver those solutions because “she cares more about people.”

“We’ve had tremendous growth in Las Vegas over the last few years,” she said. “We’re becoming a really international city more than ever before. All the sports that we have, we’re finally getting a fine art museum. Now we should be embarrassed about our education and our health care and our housing, so those things need to get addressed immediately.”

On education, Sodhi said Harris might do a better job with education and doesn’t recall seeing Trump do anything on it during his administration.

Chernine thinks the school district administration is top heavy and any time more money comes into the school district those top administrators get raises. He’d like to see the administration shrink and give more money to teachers. On housing affordability, Nevada hasn’t been able to catch up from the pandemic.

“We just need to release more of it so that there needs to be an easier program to release more land, which would make more houses, which would make it more affordable,” Chernine said.

Patterson doesn’t think either of the candidates could do much to fix inflation, as they can’t control the prices that are set by businesses.

“And I think one of the things I’ve realized through this whole process, you know, (the) president’s not going to fix everything, and they’re not going to fix it overnight either, and a lot of things are not within their control,” he said.

What they’d like to see from candidates

As candidates ramp up their outreach efforts in the final stretch of the election season, the group of undecided voters want to hear more from Harris and Trump about specific actions they’d take and get into the details about their policy proposals. They also want to see the candidates move away from divisive discourse and show more transparency.

“Be straightforward,” Patterson said. “Don’t promise anything you want just to get votes. Really lay out for the American public what you could really do, where there are going to be challenges and how you can work across the aisle to make a policy difference.”

Herrera would like to see Harris do more interviews with the media so he can hear what she has to say.

“I’d like to know more about her,” he said. “Is it going to be Biden 2.0? I already know what we got with Trump. I know how the economy was. I would just like more information on what Kamala is going to do, or is it just going to be another replay of what Biden did?”

The voters said they wanted the candidates to move away from divisive discourse and focus on their approaches to move the country forward.

“I’d like to hear the real deal, not the rhetoric, not the ‘Ah, this person’s horrible, Trump is a racist and Kamala is a border czar,’ ” Herrera said. “I’d like to hear some common sense stuff on how we can move our country forward together on an even playing field.”

They used the recent vice presidential debate as an example and said they liked that both GOP candidate JD Vance and Democratic nominee Tim Walz were civil and agreed on certain things and focused on policy differences.

“What I got to see, it was refreshing,” Herrera said. “I got to look under the hood of the car and go, ‘Hey, these are real people.’ ”

Chen wants to see bullet points, simple language about what each candidate is going to do and frame it more like someone is running a company.

“Be very realistic, and actually put an action plan, a deadline, whatever a company does that we can see and we can feel that they are actually going to implement, and it’s nothing like it’s a dream, right? So I think that’s something I hope I can see.”

Though it may be the opposite of how the candidates are campaigning, the undecided voters said they wanted to see vulnerability from Harris and Trump.

“I’d like to hear vulnerability, like, ‘Yeah, I screwed up, but I’m going to do better’ or, ‘Hey, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going to learn,’ ” Chernine said.

He wants to hear from them why they’re not perfect and what their weaknesses are.

“Don’t you think the average American would relate to that?” Chernine asked. “Instead of acting like you know everything, you got everything figured out, just go, ‘Hey, I don’t.’ ”

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