Like a lot of people, I have been reading through all the predictions of what is going to happen on Tuesday night.
The “Dean of the Desert” is a very left-wing writer, Jon Ralston. My friend Chuck Muth has his own intuitions. I read people like Bray, Jeremy Hughes, and others as well.
Jon has been a strong predictor in the past, but he had the benefit of the Harry Reid Machine to put some wind in his sails.
The Reid Machine has disintegrated, and the underlying electorate of Nevada has changed.
More Republicans have moved in, even if they haven’t registered as Republicans. Past data misses that.
Jon had Kamala winning in 2024.
He came out with his predictions today. He sees a blue wave in Nevada.
It’s not impossible, just improbable. Prediction markets validate his thesis.
It will be a blue wave if Republican voters stay home on Tuesday. But I think his assumptions on the vote allocation are off.
For example, in the governor’s race, he has 9% of the vote going to others. In 2022, 4% went to others. In 2018, 4.2% went to others.
Why would you project more than double going to others in 2026?
It doesn’t make any statistical sense based on a model that hews to traditional statistics.
The only way you could do it is to make an assumption or have a hypothesis that is far away from anything in the past.
I think it is fine to have a wild hypothesis if there is something extraordinary happening that would cause you to change.
This election, there is nothing extraordinary except the intense level of Trump Derangement Syndrome that exists within the Democratic Party.
There are other things pushing the electorate around, though.
Democratic Socialism, boys in girls’ sports, the Iran War, and gas prices are all in the mix.
The only race where Ralston shows a traditional “other” vote is Lt. Governor. He has the Democrat winning.
He has Democrats winning every executive office with at least a 6% “none of the above” voter allocation.
4% is a good solid placeholder. In close elections, 2% is a lot.
Is it possible? Sure.
If Republicans don’t show up on Tuesday.
Statewide, 739,531 Nevadans have voted, which is 35.5% of active voters, as of 7:27 AM PST today.
That’s about 2 points behind 2022’s pace as a share of active voters, even though about 46,000 more ballots are in.
There are 322,719 Republicans left to vote and 283,531 Democrats.
50.7% of Democrats have voted. 43.5% of Republicans have voted. 19.5% of Non-Partisans have voted, and 36% of the Independent American Party have voted.
In 2022, 72.9% of Republicans turned out compared with 60.6% of Democrats.
Did Republicans wait to vote because they were unmotivated, or are they motivated?
If the roughly 95,000 Republicans who voted early or by mail in 2022 but haven’t voted yet show up tomorrow, Election Day erases most of the Democratic edge.
I took this year’s vote totals and projected voter-day turnout. Nevada should see a total of 1,091,000 votes.
If you use 2022 late mail as a proxy for 2026, the results are very close for every race except for Secretary of State.
Cisco Aguilar wins there in every single model I have done.
Lombardo has strong crossover appeal. The rest of the downballot candidates do not.
He hasn’t had coattails, and he won’t tomorrow.
In one model I ran, Lombardo was the only Republican that won. In another, all except SoS were toss-ups. In a third, Lombardo, Anthony, and Mathews win, with Democrats winning the others.
I didn’t use data from the Noble Insights Poll. That poll seemed off to me.
Danielle Ford was pulling 7%. I don’t see that as realistic, especially because in past elections the independent candidate for governor hasn’t pulled that.
If you add that poll’s results in, Democrats will sweep, and the only race that is close is governor.
I have written in the past how much I dislike gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering eliminates competition. It invites extreme candidates, and it elects poor candidates.
This is how America is today across the country. Nevada is heavily gerrymandered.
The other thing to remember is it is nice to win primaries, but you can’t govern if you don’t win a general election.
Run a scorched-earth primary campaign, and you often pay for it in the general because that kind of campaign can hurt turnout.
Any consultant that says they win a lot of primaries is deflecting.
I looked at the CD2 race. It’s a gerrymandered +7 Republican district.
That’s the bogey any generic Republican needs to hit to be considered successful.
Mark Amodei routinely blew the +7 away, winning by double digits. He won it by 22 points in 2022.
I apologize to the Flippo campaign team, but a RINO doesn’t win that district by 22 points in any election. They are just spinning and are wrong.
Chuck used anecdotal information to conclude that Flippo will win, but it will be close.
For what it is worth, often you can compile anecdotal information to form a hypothesis, as long as you are making sure your information doesn’t have a lot of confirmation bias baked in.
I have heard from others in other parts of CD2 the same things Chuck is saying.
Is it real? We will find out on Tuesday night.
Flippo has some real problems. He hasn’t been transparent about his finances.
As a person who has had a forty-year finance career and been a fiduciary, the stuff he is saying about “putting assets in a trust” is pure deflection.
What he says he is trying to accomplish with his finances is not hard to do. My billionaire friends took care of things like that in a quarter.
To resolve any questions about his military record, all he has to do is release his DD-214.
Most Republicans will look the other way and vote for him. I think Independents will too because TBT, while popular in the Democratic Party, has positions that put her squarely in the socialist wing of the Democratic Party.
That stuff doesn’t fly except in urban areas of the US at this time.
The margin looks like it would be +3 based on the ballots that have come in. Far below the +7 bogey.
Based on what should come in and the way the district traditionally votes, the margin should be +6 to +9 in line with the gerrymander.
But Flippo is not Amodei, so will the vote fall in line with expectations that use past voting patterns?
Benitez-Thompson would need about 60–65% of independents, choosing between just the two of them.
In 2022, independents gave the Democrat about 48%, so the gap is large.
I think current models overstate the support the Independent candidate will get, and they also overstate the amount of support TBT will get from Independents.
Flippo will and should get a primary in 2028, unless he far overperforms expectations, and that would be +10 or more.
In the other CD races, things have to go awfully right for Republicans to win because the districts are so gerrymandered for the Democrats.
Election-night tell: the Henderson and Summerlin-South Election Day vote.
If Republicans win CD3’s Election Day by 20 points or more, it is game on.
What are the odds of that? Long, 15% to 20%.
In CD1, if Latino voters vote Republican, Carrie Buck has a clear shot.
For Carrie, the election night tell is Election Day turnout and margins in East Las Vegas precincts.
Low turnout with a Republican Election Day margin there would be the first sign of an upset.
For Cody Whipple to win, the path is narrower.
He needs the heavily Democratic places inside his district not to turn out, and the rural ones to overwhelm. He also needs a big shift from Hispanic voters to vote Republican.
Whipple needs to win Nye County by 40 points, and have North Las Vegas turnout down. North Las Vegas has a mayoral election, so I don’t think that will happen.
What’s it come down to?
Independent voters who are unregistered with any party.
They didn’t get to decide in the primaries. If they whine about getting better candidates, join a party and vote for them in the primary.
They do get to decide on Election Day.
Generally, Independents in Nevada lean right. The way I modeled it, Independents broke 49-46 to the Republicans.
If it’s more like 2022, when Independents broke for Republicans 52-48, Republicans win, except in the Secretary of State race, where Marchant loses.
Most races will not be decided on Tuesday night. That’s unfortunate because it invites allegations of fraud.
But the way Nevada does mail-in balloting, counting will go on for a while longer. We won’t know who won until the following week at least.
Hopefully, both sides have reserved some money for attorneys because my guess is a few of the races will be so close that they will wind up in court.
My ballot is in, and I voted for Republicans in every race but one.
I donated more money to Republicans, besides my own campaign, than I ever have in my life before this year. You can check candidate C+E’s and total it up for yourself.
If Nevada goes blue, buckle up; real estate prices will fall.
This article was originally published via JeffreyCarter.substack.com on 11/2/2026. The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Nevada News & Views. Digital technology may have been used in the research, writing, or production of this article. Please verify information and consult additional sources as needed.
