Trump takes Nevada victory lap; Democrats lick wounds
Democrats are trying to figure out how to make a comeback in Nevada after President Trump became the first GOP presidential candidate to win the state since President George W. Bush in 2004.
Trump is set to take a victory lap this weekend, traveling to the state to celebrate his big win during this first week of his new presidency.
“I’m really going to Nevada to thank them for the vote, because we won Nevada overwhelmingly and that’s usually a Democratic vote,” said Trump, who defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris in the state by about 46,000 votes.
Democrats nationally are trying to pick up the pieces and figure out what went wrong after Harris lost every swing state to Trump, and the party lost the Senate majority and failed to win back the House.
Talks on what went wrong in the Silver State are taking place.
“I've said it before that Democrats need to spend more time listening to people and less time preaching to people, and I think that that's the number one lesson we can come away with,” Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) told The Hill.
“I will say that I think the Trump campaign focused very smartly on people who had never voted before and turned them out,” she added.
Trump credited his win to his proposal for “tax-free tips,” which he debuted at a rally in Las Vegas last June and may have been popular with the state’s service workers. Harris, signaling the importance of the issue, later endorsed the tax-free tips proposal herself.
Now that Trump’s in office, progressive voices in the state are “reenergizing and reemerging” as they get ready to "fight back” against the new administration's policies, said Annette Magnus, a Nevada-based political consultant who’s worked predominantly with Democrats in the state.
The November election did, however, offer some wins for the party. Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) staved off a challenge from Republican Sam Brown, and all three of Nevada’s House Democrats won reelection.
Members of the party were also able to pass a ballot measure that seeks to enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution. Democrats need voters to approve it one more time in 2026 before it can be included.
And though Harris lost the presidential race, one Democratic operative who spoke to The Hill credited the former vice president with helping stave off other losses.
“We lost the big one, for sure, and it sucks, and there's some tweaking to do, and some lessons learned at the national level about what we need to do next,” the operative said.
“But I don’t think that Democrats carte blanche in the state of Nevada need to really tweak their messages all that much, because everybody else won.”
Lower down the ballot, Republicans successfully blocked Democrats from having a supermajority in either legislative chamber, which would have made it harder for GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo. Still, Democrats still handily control both chambers.
Against the backdrop of all this, Democrats have lost ground on registered voters. Democrats had about 669,000 active registered voters in December 2020, while Republicans had about 590,000, and nonpartisan voters sat at roughly 439,000.
By the end of last month, Democrats saw only 626,000 active registered voters, with Republicans gaining ground closely behind them at 622,000. Nonpartisan active registered voters outpaced both, however, ballooning to 702,000.
David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, chalked up the changing numbers in part to automatic voter registration, noting “some of that nonpartisan vote doesn’t really ever materialize at the polls.”
“They tend to, at least the data from the last couple presidential elections says, ebb and flow with the national tides,” Damore said of Nevada’s nonpartisan voters. “The real challenge for the Democrats is getting out what they think are their Democrat-voting nonpartisans, and that's what they had said they were going to do this time, and it didn't happen.”
The party outside the White House generally gains congressional seats in the midterm elections, and many Democrats think they have a shot at winning back the House majority in 2026.
In Nevada, they also think there could be gains as voters tire of Trump’s policies.
“I believe that in a couple of months, may not even take that long, there's gonna buyer's remorse,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) said.
“We got a large Hispanic population. They're gonna see what this immigration policy’s all about,” she said.
But just like in other parts of the country, there are also signs that some Nevada Democrats after the stinging losses are looking at where they might work with Trump.
“If he's serious about passing it,” Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) said of legislation on not taxing tips, “then I look forward to finding ways to work with Republican colleagues here in the House to get it done."
Mike Lillis contributed.
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