Republicans are slowly closing in on Democrats in Nevada voter registration, but the real news is that neither is the largest party. That honor belongs to the rapidly growing numbers of folks who register with “No Party” (NPs), or as Independents, decline to state, etc.
Recent in-depth survey research by a private organization has revealed the politics of these voters. (Full disclosure: I’m president of the group that funded and conducted the research.) While their preferences may be relevant only to school trustee, city council, county board, judge and related candidates in this month’s primary elections, they’ll be very important to all candidates in November’s general elections.
Three initial points stand out. First, recent practices by the state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) of registering new driver licensees as NP have not much contributed to this trend. Instead, significant numbers fled the Democratic Party and some left the Republicans (who have also gained more from Democrats than vice-versa).
Second, NP voters turn out for general elections around 60 percent, much less than Republicans and Democrats. With about 95 percent of major-party voters voting for their own candidates and high turnouts from those parties in many counties, politicians seeking NP votes have a much better chance of increasing their totals than those assiduously courting only their own or the opposition.
Third, when NPs are asked to identify their politics, they are most likely to call themselves progressives. However, when queried on specific issues, they lean center-right.
The research segmented NPs into affluent, ethnic minority and religious/morality groups. It posed about half-a-dozen different statements to voters in each group, asking them to rate their agreement on a one-to-five scale.
Thus, when affluent voters heard a statement endorsing teaching critical race theory (CRT) over other subjects in schools, they were opposed by 59 percent. A clear, not huge rejection. However, when they were given a pro-school-choice statement (ie. parental choice; and money should follow the children), 84 percent agreed.
So, candidates addressing education issues would be welladvised to start the conversation with these voters on school choice. Similarly, NPs strongly favor spending on police services and oppose public-employee union membership. By lesser margins, they oppose biological males competing in females’ sports.
Ethnic minority voters strongly support more policing and oppose mandatory COVID vaccinations and easing high school graduation requirements. They give weaker support to strong border control on immigration. And they similarly weakly oppose birth control for minors absent parental notification and oppose increased taxes on the rich.
NP voters for whom religion and morality are important were almost completely motivated (98 percent) by judging people on character, not race. And they strongly support more punishment of petty crime and oppose closing churches and small businesses but not large stores for COVID. They oppose mandatory COVID vaccination two-to-one and providing clean needles to drug addicts by a similar margin. By a modest margin (57 percent) they reject the idea there are more than two genders.
The second part of this research sought to determine how much ground candidates focusing on NP voters and their issues can make in Nevada legislative races. Nearly all such research focuses wrongly only on Democrat and Republican registration numbers in each district. Instead, because NPs are the plurality of voters, this project developed a conservative-minus-progressive (C-P) metric that recognizes the numbers and preferences of NP voters, as well as Democrats and Republicans.
Previous research by Princeton University using Democrat/ Republican metrics concluded gerrymandering has nearly assured Nevada Democrats a decade of strong majorities in the Assembly and likely control of the state Senate. The C-P results show Republicans have a good chance for a Senate majority this year and quite reasonable possibilities to take the Assembly.
The outcome will depend on how well Republican candidates target the NPs via social media, advertising, walking and calling on issues and for turnout, not on persuading them to reregister, and not on serving lots of red meat to their base.
Ron Knecht is Senior Policy Fellow at Nevada Policy Research Institute.
