CARSON CITY, Nev. Nevada’s two major parties are close to a dead heat on the voter rolls. As of the most recent monthly report from the Secretary of State’s office, covering September and published Oct. 5, Democrats held 575,465 active registrations and Republicans held 571,078, out of 2,084,377 active voters statewide.
Measured against each other alone, that is a Democratic edge of just 0.38 percentage points, a calculation this outlet ran from the state’s reported totals.
In the ballots actually being cast for the Nov. 3 general election, the race looks nothing like that close. Nevada’s early voting has Democrats ahead by a much wider margin than their registration numbers would predict, and the gap has held up through three straight updates on Tuesday alone.
A Registration Race That Keeps Flipping
The closeness itself is not new. Registered Republicans overtook Democrats for the first time in nearly 20 years in a report covering January 2025, by a margin of just 187 voters, 618,539 to 618,352.
That is a Republican edge of roughly 0.02 percentage points among the two parties, a gap so thin it amounted to a rounding error on a 2.4 million person voter file.
Since then, the lead has changed hands more than once as both parties’ rolls have grown and shrunk from month to month. By September, Democrats were back on top by 4,387, meaning the two-party registration race has moved from essentially even to essentially even again, just with the other party ahead.
The Early Vote Isn’t Close to Even
Nevada’s early voting period, tracked ballot by ballot by the Nevada Independent’s early voting blog, tells a different story. At 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, with just under 152,000 ballots cast statewide, Democrats accounted for 40 percent of ballots and Republicans 35 percent, with the remaining quarter going to nonpartisan and third party voters.
Narrowed to just the two major parties, as this outlet calculated from those shares, that is a Democratic edge of 6.67 percentage points, more than 17 times the size of the party’s 0.38 point lead on the registration rolls.
Democrats were also turning out at a higher rate relative to their own registered voters, 11 percent compared with 9 percent for Republicans, about 22 percent higher.
The Democratic lead held through the rest of Tuesday, though it narrowed somewhat as the day went on. By 3 p.m., with Republicans picking up about 1,000 net votes during the day, the statewide lead had eased to roughly 7,300 ballots, or about 4 points. By 8:30 p.m., with almost 200,000 ballots cast, Democrats led by 7,103 ballots, which the blog’s tracker put at about 3.7 percentage points.
Registration edge for Democrats, two parties only: 0.38 percentage points. Early voting edge for Democrats, same two parties, as of Tuesday morning: 6.67 percentage points. That is roughly a 17-fold gap between how Nevada’s two major parties are registered and how they are actually voting so far.
Clark Flipped From Red to Blue
The most visible change is in Clark County, home to about 73 percent of Nevada’s active voters. In the 2022 midterm, Republicans won the first day of in-person early voting there by about 8 points and the third day by about 13 points, according to the Nevada Independent’s tracker.
This cycle, Democrats are leading Clark’s in-person vote instead, and turnout is up: 23,181 Clark voters cast in-person ballots over the first weekend of early voting this year, against 19,506 over the same weekend in 2022, an increase of about 19 percent, by this outlet’s calculation.
Clark’s mail ballots tell a more mixed story. Two days into mail voting in 2022, Democrats led by about 13 points in Clark; this cycle, through Oct. 18, their lead was just under 12 points, roughly similar. But a single-day snapshot from Oct. 19 showed Clark’s mail ballots splitting 43 percent Democratic to 29 percent Republican, a margin the tracker described as below Clark’s usual two-to-one Democratic advantage in mail voting.
How the Counties Split, as of Tuesday Morning
- Clark County cast 66 percent of Tuesday morning’s statewide ballots, below its roughly 73 percent share of the state’s active voters. Democrats led there by about 12 points.
- Washoe County cast 21 percent of ballots. Democrats led there by about 8 points, even though the county’s own voter registration favors Republicans by about 3 points.
- Rural counties combined cast 13 percent of ballots. Republicans led there by about 32 points, the widest county-level margin of the day.
Why the Numbers Might Not Hold
The Nevada Independent’s own tracker cautions that early comparisons across election cycles are imperfect, since the mix of mail and in-person voting shifts from year to year and the Secretary of State’s site was undergoing maintenance Tuesday night, delaying the next update.
Nevada’s early voting runs through Oct. 30, with mail ballots due to be postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by Nov. 7, leaving more than a week of voting still to come before any of Tuesday’s numbers can be treated as a reliable preview of the Nov. 3 outcome.
