If you were betting on President Barack Obama’s chances to win Nevada in a Vegas casino, you would probably consider the state’s staggering unemployment rate, its history of voting for Republicans in seven of the last 10 presidential elections and its large Mormon population. And you might be wise to put your chips on him anyway.
Despite the many factors working against Obama in the Silver State, he is still favored to beat Mitt Romney there in November.
Nevada bore the brunt of the recession arguably worse than any other state. Its unemployment rate dipped below 12 percent for the first time since 2009 last week, but its jobless rate is still the highest in the country. While any improvement is welcome for the state’s beleaguered economy, there was an important caveat: The dip in unemployment numbers was partly due to a shrinking labor force. On paper, that should validate Romney’s constant criticism that the economy has not recovered fast enough under Obama.
But recent polls indicate that talking point is simply not resonating in Nevada. A survey from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP) last month gave Obama a healthy 8-point advantage over Romney in the state. Another poll released last month by Rasmussen Reports, a Republican-leaning firm, showed the president’s approval rating in Nevada at 55 percent. The current PollTracker Average of both the presidential contest and Obama’s approval rating in Nevada tells a similar story.
Jim Williams, an analyst for PPP, told TPM that Obama has made large gains in Nevada since last October, when his firm found the president’s approval rating under water. In the same survey, Nevada voters viewed Romney favorably by a narrow margin. Williams said the candidates’ fortunes can both be tied to the state’s middle-of-the-road voters.
“Obama has improved his standing with independents since the fall, while Romney has dropped,” Williams said. “I think that’s due in large part to the long Republican primary, which put Romney in a very negative light, especially with independent voters and that’s been more pronounced in Nevada. Romney had some crossover appeal with independents and Democrats in Nevada, but that’s gone now.”
Williams’ assessment is backed up by the numbers. In PPP’s October survey, Obama held a narrow lead over Romney among Nevada independents, 47 percent to 41 percent. But in its April survey, the president’s lead over Romney among that crucial voting bloc had grown to 15 percentage points. The protracted Republican nomination contest clearly bruised Romney’s image, but his standing with Nevadans may have begun to decline even before he had finally broken free from the GOP pack.
In a filmed interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board last October, Romney
indicated that he did not support providing foreclosure relief for Americans with depleted mortgages, urging those homeowners to allow the foreclosure process to “run its course and hit the bottom.” Nevada is the state hardest-hit by the housing crisis, and to many residents, the remarks smacked of tone-deafness.
Even some of Romney’s own supporters distanced themselves from the remark, including Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R). Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV), who endorsed Romney, told supportersat a town hall, “Mitt Romney and I don’t agree on every issue and certainly housing is one of them. When you look at what is going on here in Southern Nevada, you can’t say you’ve got to let the housing market hit bottom. We have been bouncing along the bottom for years. And the fact is we have to do everything possible to: 1) keep people in their homes and 2) get people who are out of their homes back into their homes.”
But the backlash against the gaffe also suggests a suspicion among Nevada voters toward the free-market purity that permeates Romney’s message. Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada-Reno, said that Romney has been unable to capitalize in Nevada because his proposed alternatives call to mind the origins of the state’s economic woes.
“Maybe the recovery hasn’t come fast enough, maybe Obama’s policies haven’t worked as well as hoped, but the market hasn’t worked either,” Herzik told TPM. “There’s a dose of reality with many Nevada voters who are acknowledging that Obama didn’t create this economy. We saw this starting back in 2005 and 2006, before Obama was even a candidate.”
There may still be time for Romney, who’s currently making a pivot to the center after several months of building support with his party’s base, to better tailor his message in Nevada. David Flaherty, CEO and founder of the Republican polling firm Magellan Strategies, believes that the state of the race there will hinge on how Romney rolls out his general election strategy.
“The economy in a state like Nevada at least gives the Romney campaign a chance to make a case,” Flaherty told TPM. “How they make that case and present their talking points will make the difference and that remains to be seen.”
It doesn’t help Romney that he will likely receive little assistance from the Nevada Republican Party, an outfit that has proven to be disorderly and an ongoing source of frustration for the Republican National Committee.
Moreover, Nevada’s demographics — much like the entire Mountain West — are also conducive to Obama’s re-election hopes, with a population that is skewing younger and more Hispanic. The state is also home to several influential unions, which powered Obama’s win there in 2008 and helped Sen. Harry Reid (D) survive a competitive re-election fight in 2010. Those coalitions will likely prove more significant than Nevada’s large Mormon population, a group whose role in Romney’s landslide victory in the state’s Republican caucuses was amplified due to a relatively small voter turnout.
If several key voting groups ultimately help Obama overcome a weak economy and stagnant job market en route to a win in Nevada, the triumph will give the president more than just the six electoral votes at stake: It may point the way toward re-election, even without a sharp economic turnaround.
