Read on Twitter
Finished up the last Nevada Senate thread I’ll do for a while! What you’re seeing is counties ordered by population, low to high, with a running vote margin showing the leader. We all understand the rural/urban divide, but I think this method really makes it pop.
As @kkondik recently noted, Nevada is only slightly more blue leaning than the rest of the country. Clark vote totals typically bail out Dem candidates, but nothing guarantees that this will be true of EVERY election going forward. It also was not always the case historically.
It’s striking to look at the ways that Republicans and Democrats used to win in Nevada, and compare those maps to now. Jacky Rosen won exclusively by running up the score in Clark - with Washoe as a pleasant bonus. Contrast that with Richard Bryan’s 1994 re-election here.
Bryan ran much more competitive in the smaller counties while still holding a healthy lead in Clark. In ‘74, Harry Reid was also able to run competitively in the smaller counties, but Paul Laxalt built a large enough lead that even with Clark breaking for him, Reid still lost.
As recently as the 1940s and 50s, Clark County wasn’t even the most populous county in the state - let alone the political juggernaut it has become. Pat McCarran won Clark in 1944, but he also won Washoe, which leaned more Republican at the time and had a larger population.
I hope you enjoy the maps! Like I said, the urban-rural divide in Nevada, along with many other places in this country, has accelerated dramatically. We are still beginning to understand how this will play out over the long term. I’ll leave the predicting to @RalstonReports. https://twitter.com/politicatgrump/status/1258850666480451585">https://twitter.com/politicat...
*screech*
“Hi, I’m Jacky Rosen. You’re probably wondering how I got into this mess...”
“Hi, I’m Jacky Rosen. You’re probably wondering how I got into this mess...”
I only included enough senate races to give you a sense of the dominant trends within Nevada politics, but I’m able to do this visualization for any Nevada Senate race dating back to 1920. If there’s one I didn’t include that you’d like to see, feel free to let me know!
