(Trump photo: Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current; Harris photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Donald Trump was leading Kamala Harris in Nevada after initial results were released Tuesday night.
Trump had 51.2% of the vote, to Harris’ 47.2%, with an estimated 74% of ballots had counted.
The initial results included votes cast by those who voted in person during early voting, as well as votes cast by mail prior and counted prior to Election Day.
Mail ballots received on and after Election Day also must be counted, along with remaining votes cast in person on Election Day. In 2020, the winner of the presidential race in Nevada was not known until the following Saturday, four days after Election Day, though thanks to streamlined counting procedures state and local election officials are optimistic the wait won’t be that long this year.
Nevada is one of seven so-called battleground states where polls had indicated neither candidate had a comfortable lead, and where either could potentially win the state. By the time results were released in Nevada Tuesday night, Trump had won two of those battleground states, North Carolina and Georgia, and was leading in the other five. Tabulation of ballots in Nevada and the other four states was expected to stretch into Wednesday and possibly beyond before a winner could be determined.
If Trump ultimately wins Nevada, it would be the case of the third time being the charm. Though he won the electoral college in 2016, he lost Nevada to Hillary Clinton that year. In 2020, he lost Nevada, and the presidency, to Joe Biden.
Polls indicated that in Nevada, as in the nation, the top issue for a majority of voters was the economy. For most of the year voters expressed more faith in Trump to handle the economy than both Biden while he was still in the race, and Harris after Biden left it in July.
But as the nominee, Harris had steadily chipped away at Trump’s lead on the economy, and within the last week of the election at least one prominent national poll, the New York Times Siena survey, found Harris with a very slight edge among Nevada voters in “handling the issue you think is most important.”
Harris had also eroded some of Trump’s early lead on the immigration issue, while consistently performing more strongly than Trump on reproductive rights and personal qualities.
A too close to call presidential race in Nevada is an echo of 2020. As election night finished that year, Biden had 49.3 percent of the vote and Trump 48.7 percent, with fewer than 9,000 votes separating the candidates statewide.
As mail ballots were counted in subsequent days, Biden’s lead eventually grew to more than 33,000, and the Associated Press Decision Desk called Biden the winner on the Saturday after Election Day. Earlier that same day, the AP had declared Biden the winner in Pennsylvania, which had put him over the 270 electoral college votes need to win the presidency.