Away from The Strip, the neon lights and the clang of slot machines, Nevadais gearing up for one of the biggest battles of the 2024 elections season.
The U.S. doesn’t allow betting on presidential races, but if it did, it would be hard to place a wager on a straight up winner: Nevada remains a deeply purple state.
As President Joe Biden and Donald Trump head for a rematch, the odds are much better for finding a Nevada voter fed up with both options and wishing to put the whole election season behind them than choosing a clear frontrunner.
‘This election is a total mess, a total mess. I believe that Democrats and Republicans should get together and make this country a great country, not fighting like enemies against one another,’ said 70-year-old Milagros Garcia who moved out to Las Vegas from New Jersey five years ago.
The registered Democrat has no idea who she will vote for come November with the two major parties fighting ‘like cats and dogs.’
Voters show up to cast ballots in the Nevada June 11 primary at a Las Vegas community center. Polling locations saw steady turnout despite near record temperatures and sweltering heat
‘With so many things going crazy in this country, I’m kind of thinking of changing to an Independent,’ she told DailyMail.com.
‘I believe in the Democratic party, but I don’t want to put the Republican party down or anything. What’s happening is disgraceful,’ she sighed.
Republican Carl Bottorl, 62, voted for Trump in the last election. He said he is very much undecided at this point.
‘I would prefer better choices,’ said Bottorl. ‘I remember when my son was two years old and he needed to eat vegetables and I said “Do you want peas or carrots?” And he says “I want more choices.” So I’m like my son: I would prefer more choices.’
For him, the most important issues are honesty and integrity as well as the vitality of the candidate. He said he could see himself voting for a Democrat if it’s the right choice but perhaps less so third party.
He still views Nevada as a battleground state and wants his vote to count.
‘I do think the pendulum is swinging back toward red just a bit, or the open minded thinkers like me are just starting to exercise free thought a little more,' he said of whether it’s still a purple state.
The last time a Republican presidential candidate won the state was President George W Bush twenty years ago. Before that Bill Clinton won the state twice.
Biden won Nevada by less than 2.5 percent or about 33,500 votes in 2020. It was only a slightly larger advantage than Clinton winning the state by 27,000 votes in 2016, when she lost the election.
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are vying for votes in Nevada. Biden won the state in 2020 by less than 34,000 votes
Nevada residents said it feels like people are more fed up and disheartened than in past elections.
‘It’s very very frustrating right now, and it’s both sides,’ said Ginnae Stamanis. ‘I just wish that people would be better educated. Instead of following what they think is right, find out what really is right.’
She declined to say who she was voting for this November but said ‘I am very disappointed in both sides.’
There are new factors at play than in the last election - but recent events do not appear to have shifted the needle.
‘I know recently what happened with Mr. Trump, his indictments and things like that, said David Childers, 55. 'President Biden has also not really done much just the last four years, so it’s going to be very interesting.'
‘I’m still on the fence right now. I’m a registered Democrat but I”m still on the fence,' he said.
Despite being a Democrat, Childers did vote for Trump in 2020 and believes the economy was better under him.
Voters told DailyMail.com that there is a sense of frustration with the options and the state of the country in Nevada ahead of the presidential election like never before
Nevada with its huge tourism and hospitality industry was devastated by the coronaviruspandemic.
Childers, who was driving forUber saw business slow during the pandemic but counts himself lucky it didn’t shut down for him altogether.
‘I know [Trump] gets bashed for what happened with the White House and COVID, but at the end of the day, I felt our economy was a lot better with him in office for those years that he did it versus what Biden has done so far,’ Childers said.
Others fear more people moving to the state could lead to further change.
‘I don’t want them to turn Nevada into California,’ said Harold Yost, 58, as more people have been moving to the state from less affordable locations.
‘The last two elections have been super close and here in the city, I see it blue, but I deliver fuel and I go up Tonopah, places like that, and it’s Trump everywhere.’
Biden won Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, by more than nine points in 2020. But head north, to more rural and much less populated Nye County, Trump won it by 40 points.
‘The workers up there are like “we got to get this place back to red.”’
Yost’s top issue for voting is the economy and with inflationsoaring, he said he will cast another ballot for Trump.
Yostalso slammed the Biden administration wiping debt for student loans for some people and was not happy with giving so much money to allies.
Former President Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Las Vegas on June 9, 2024. Thousands lined up to attend despite the record heat
President Joe Biden speaking during a campaign event in Las Vegas in early February. Biden also returned to the state in mid-March
But for Democrats there are other issues at play.
‘There are a lot of things showing up that are making me rather sad about our country,’ said Susan McDonald, 70. ‘Biblically it says without standing together we can go down a House divided.’
She’s a Democrat and plans to vote for Biden again in November. She likes him, but she’s not enthusiastic.
‘There are some things on both sides that I do not like, that I don’t find are above ground,’ McDonald said. She noted Biden’s son Hunter was just convicted on gun charges, and Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
In the end, it comes down to one main issue for her and her own experience.
‘As a woman, my body is very important to me, and I’m a woman that was not able to bear children, so to have that taken away for women that could possibly have children, that’s got me where I’m completely shaken as a women,’ she said, referring to women’s access to health care and abortion. ‘Disrespect of women, I cannot understand that.’
The number one issue for Democrats in Nevada in the most recent midterms was abortion.
McDonald also noted while Biden has his issues, she could not believe Trump’s surrounding the attack on January 6, 2021.
Others don’t find the charges against Trump or his recent conviction a factor in their vote at all.
Asked who he plans to vote for, Yost quipped: ‘the felon as they say. Of course.’
Donald Trump has a slight edge in Nevada according to recent polling
A poll in early June of registered voters by Fox Newsfound Trump was leading in the state by five points 45 percent to Biden’s 40 percent.
Seven percent backed third party candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. Kennedy is in the midst of a legal battle to get on the Nevada ballot in November.
That same polling found the majority of voters viewed Biden and Trump unfavorably.
More than half of those polled believed Trump did receive a fair trial in New York, but 65 percent said the conviction does not matter to them.
In a state where Trump baselessly continues to deny he lost the election in 2020 and six top Republican officials are facing charges for a fake electors plot in the last election to overturn Biden’s win, 30 percent of voters still do not believe Biden was legitimately elected, the poll found.
The average of polling in the state has Trump up more than five points.
Both the Trump and Biden campaigns have been working to expand operations in the state with less than five months to go before Election Day and both candidates have made appearances in the state.
During a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Sunday, Trump vowed to end taxation on tipped wages if reelected, a ploy to woo voters in a state where tens of thousands work in the hospitality industry. But it’s an empty promise unless Congress acts.
President Biden visited the state with stops in Las Vegas and Reno in March where he held events focused on lowering costs for American families.
A recent poll by Voto Latino, an organization that engages Latino voters, found that Biden is at risk of losing support among Hispanics in swing states to third party candidates including in Nevada. It warned the president needs to do a better explaining to voters what his administration has done on the economy – the top issue for Latino voters.
Nearly 20 percent of Nevada’s population is Hispanic, according to the 2020 census.
Both campaigns have voter outreach operations underway in the state.
The Trump campaign said it has opened multiple field offices but declined to give any specifics in terms of numbers or staffing.
The ex-president's campaign has been trailing Biden in terms of fundraising and staff for months, but it has seen an influx of funds in recent months as Trump shored up the GOP nomination.
The Biden campaign has twelve field offices in the state, a bulk of which opened in March and April and a staff of 70 in the Silver State. It was one of the first states where the campaign announced hiring.
They've already been out knocking on doors multiple times a week as well as making online contact. It's the earliest a Democratic presidential campaign has been out knocking on doors in the state ever.
They argue the ground game in the state will matter ahead of November as a huge number of voters are nonpartisan, and Nevada has seen one of the fastest growing populations of any state.
