How Important is Nevada in 2024?

There are few people in political punditry more revered than Jon Ralston.  The quick-witted Nevada political guru is pretty much the first, last, and only major name in election tea leaf-reading in the Silver State.  When he said that he thought Catherine Cortez Masto was headed to reelection in 2022, virtually every other pundit in the political chattering class changed their predictions (and they were right).  Ralston has a saying that goes "We Matter" when it comes to Nevada, a state that has been at the forefront of presidential races & battles for the Senate (particularly thanks to its longtime former senator, Harry Reid) for decades.

Ralston, along with Cortez Masto, got into a bit of a conversation online this past week when Dean Phillips' presidential campaign surrogate Steve Schmidt proclaimed that Nevada "doesn't matter."  Both Ralston and Cortez Masto hit back, pointing out that Nevada is (and remains) not just an important swing state, but also one of the most important early primary states on the Democratic calendar.  If you want to charitably call what Phillips is doing a presidential campaign (so far it feels more like a vanity project), his strategy seems to be to ignore Nevada & South Carolina, and zero in entirely on New Hampshire.  I wanted to take a look at this strategy not just because of the comments of these political figures, but also because it's a common refrain on Elections Twitter when it comes to the state-does Nevada matter in the presidential contest in 2024?

First off, when it comes to the presidential primary race in 2024, no state really matters for the Democrats (and probably the Republicans).  Incumbent presidents don't lose primaries, and it's probable that even as a write-in candidate Joe Biden will clear 50+% in New Hampshire.  So I'm going to put a pin in that, except to say that as the only one of the four early primary states (along with Iowa, New Hampshire, & South Carolina) that's a swing state, of course it matters.  Seeing the candidate who best performs in a swing state primary doesn't guarantee success in the state (Bernie Sanders won the state in 2020, Joe Biden still won it it in November...the same with Bernie taking it in 2016 while Hillary won it in 2016), but it does give you a taste of where the passion lies.

So let's shift to the November 2024 elections.  I'll start out for Congress-it does matter, though not necessarily to the degree as some other states.  The state will have a crucial Senate election, but it is unlikely to be a tipping point state election.  That doesn't mean that it won't eventually be a tipping point state election.  In fact, no single incumbent Democratic senator won by a smaller margin than Catherine Cortez Masto, so if that were to stick and the Democrats got a 50/50 Senate, it decidedly mattered (for the curious, the current tipping point senator is Jon Ossoff of Georgia).  But if you look at just the races that are up in 2024, if the Democrats are winning a majority, they'll be doing it in one of four states: Arizona, Texas, Ohio, & Montana.  They need 3/4 of those...no math where the majority is in peril hinges on Jacky Rosen getting a second term.  If her race is a genuine tossup on Election Night, the Democrats already lost the Senate (though again, her seat might make the difference in 2026 or 2028).  The same is true for the three swing House seats-all important, and critical to getting past 218, but if Susie Lee or Dina Titus are in trouble, Hakeem Jeffries isn't getting his majority.

The presidential race is a different question, though.  The bigger question around Nevada isn't whether it could be a close race (it will be), but whether it would matter to the electoral math.  Nevada's six electoral votes are the smallest of the seven states that are generally considered to be tossup states (Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, & Wisconsin).  To be honest, there's not a lot of super realistic maps where Nevada would make the difference.  The most plausible one where Nevada's electoral votes matter would be a case where NC/PA/WI are red and GA/AZ/MI (all other seats stay the same).  This map would be 268D-264R, which would mean the state would get one candidate over the threshold to 270...but I'll be honest, there's not a lot of indication that Georgia would go blue while Pennsylvania would go red (most assume that Pennsylvania will be bluer in 2024).  So no, it's possible that when it comes specifically to 270, that this won't matter.

But Joe Biden should still campaign there like it will.  For starters, leading in a swing state matters because you want as many insurance policies as you can get, and you want as many good headlines from the press as you can get, because it drives turnout.  More importantly, Nevada is a microcosm of both things that Democrats do well at, and areas they need to improve.  It has a large Latino population, a centrally-located urban population around Las Vegas, and a huge union presence...all three constituencies that Biden needs to drive across the nation, not just for his own campaign, but for the Democrats up-and-down the ballot across the country.  Secondly, Nevada is the Biden state with the lowest number of voters who did not graduate from college.  The Democrats cannot afford their numbers with this demographic to totally crater, even as it has gone down in recent years.  Campaigning in Nevada gives Biden & Harris a chance to pitch to these voters not just in Nevada, but across the country.  Same with Trump-the only path to victory for him is to increase this margin in not just Nevada but across the country-speaking to people that have been disproportionately impacted by inflation to try to get his own second term.

So yes, Nevada does matter, because it's representative of the kind of electorate Biden and Trump need to turn out in order to win nationwide in a way that almost no other swing state really speaks toward.