Control Of The Senate May Fall To Nevada As The Count Draws To A Close

Saturday is the last day mail-in ballots can arrive and be counted under the state’s new election law. Election officials are rushing through a backlog of tens of thousands of ballots to determine the winner of the race. The Nevada race took on added significance after Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was declared the winner of his re-election campaign in Arizona on Friday night, giving his party 49 seats in the chamber. Republicans also have 49. If Cortez Masto wins, Democrats will retain control of the Senate, given Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. If Laxalt wins, Georgia’s Senate runoff next month will determine which party holds the one-vote Senate advantage. Cortez Masto was only a few hundred votes behind Laxalt, with most of the remaining uncounted ballots in Democratic Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Democrats were confident that these ballots would put their candidate in the lead. Laxalt said he expects to maintain his advantage and be declared the winner. But he acknowledged in a tweet Saturday that the calculus has changed because Cortez Masto performed better than Republicans expected in Clark County ballots counted in recent days. “This has narrowed our window of victory,” he tweeted, acknowledging that the race comes down to Clark’s final polls. “If it’s GOP districts or slightly DEM-leaning, then we can still win,” Laxalt tweeted. “If they continue to trend towards heavy DEMs, then it will overtake us.” If the race remains too close to call after Saturday, a few thousand more ballots could be added to the totals early next week. Postal ballots with clerical errors can be “cured” by voters until the end of the day on Monday and then added to the totals. And a few thousand provisional ballots also remain, votes that election officials must double-check are legally countable until Tuesday before they are counted. “We know this is a serious count. There are people all over the country looking for these results,” Joe Gloria, the clerk in Clark County, said at a news conference Saturday. “We know people need to see this crowd. We are not going to delay it any longer.” Gloria said all 22,000-plus ballots remaining will be counted by Saturday night. There are also 7,100 “cured” ballots and 5,555 provisional ballots. Clark County accounts for three-quarters of Nevada’s population. Gloria noted that it takes a few cycles to adjust to counting ballots in the mail-in system that Nevada switched to during the 2020 pandemic. He also noted that state law requires him to accept ballots by Saturday. “We couldn’t have done it sooner, even if we wanted to,” Gloria said. In another key race, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak lost his re-election bid to Republican challenger Sheriff Joe Lombardo on Friday night. Nevada, a closely divided swing state, is one of the most racially divided in the nation, a working-class state whose residents have been hit particularly hard by inflation and other economic turmoil. About three-quarters of Nevada voters said the country is headed in the wrong direction, and about 5 in 10 named the economy the most important issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of 2,100 state voters. Voters viewed the economy negatively, with VoteCast finding nearly 8 in 10 saying economic conditions are either not so good or bad. Only about 2 in 10 called the economy excellent or good. And about a third of voters said their families are falling behind financially. But that hasn’t necessarily translated into anger for President Joe Biden or his party. About half saw inflation as the most important issue facing the U.S., but were evenly split on whether they thought higher prices were due to Biden’s policies or factors outside of his control. According to VoteCast, 7 in 10 voters in Nevada wanted to keep abortion legal in all or most cases, and Cortez Masto and other Democrats made right-wing preservation the focus of their campaigns. Republicans, however, relentlessly dismissed the economic argument, arguing that it was time for a change in leadership. They also sought to capitalize on lingering frustrations over pandemic shutdowns that devastated Las Vegas’ tourism-centric economy in 2020. On Thursday morning, the Associated Press declared Republican Stavros Anthony the winner of the lieutenant governor race, while Republican Andy Matthews was elected state comptroller. The state’s lone Republican Rep. Mark Amodei easily won re-election in his mostly rural district in northern Nevada. The three Democratic House members in the Las Vegas area of ​​the state were also re-elected.

Associated Press writer Scott Sonner in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

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title: “Control Of The Senate May Fall To Nevada As The Count Draws To A Close " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-03” author: “Randy Montgomery”

Saturday is the last day mail-in ballots can arrive and be counted under the state’s new election law. Election officials are scrambling to wade through a backlog of tens of thousands of ballots to determine the winner of the race, with the state’s largest county saying it hopes to be effectively done by nightfall. The Nevada race took on added significance after Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was declared the winner of his re-election campaign in Arizona on Friday night, giving his party 49 seats in the chamber. Republicans also have 49. If Cortez Masto wins, Democrats will retain control of the Senate, given Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. If Laxalt wins, Georgia’s Senate runoff next month will determine which party holds the one-vote Senate advantage. Cortez Masto was only a few hundred votes behind Laxalt, with most of the remaining uncounted ballots in Democratic Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Democrats were confident that these ballots would put their candidate in the lead. Laxalt said he expects to maintain his advantage and be declared the winner. But he acknowledged in a tweet Saturday that the calculus has changed because Cortez Masto performed better than Republicans expected in Clark County ballots counted in recent days. “This has narrowed our window of victory,” he tweeted, acknowledging that the race comes down to Clark County’s final ballots. “If it’s GOP districts or slightly DEM-leaning, then we can still win,” Laxalt tweeted. “If they continue to trend towards heavy DEMs, then it will overtake us.” If a winner isn’t clear by the end of the day Saturday, attention will turn to a few thousand more ballots that could add to the totals early next week. Postal ballots with clerical errors can be “cured” by voters until the end of the day on Monday and then added to the totals. And a few thousand provisional ballots also remain, votes that election officials must double-check are legally countable until Tuesday before they are counted. “We know this is a serious count. There are people all over the country looking for these results,” Joe Gloria, the clerk in Clark County, said at a news conference Saturday. “We know people need to see this crowd. We are not going to delay it any longer.” Gloria said all 22,000-plus ballots remaining will be counted by Saturday night. “Everyone is counted,” Gloria said. “My coffers are empty.” However, state law requires a relative handful of ballots to be delayed. In Clark County, there are also 7,100 “cured” ballots and 5,555 provisional ballots. The county accounts for three-quarters of Nevada’s population. Gloria noted that it takes a few cycles to adjust to counting ballots in the mail-in system that Nevada switched to during the 2020 pandemic. He also noted that state law requires him to accept ballots by Saturday. “We couldn’t have done it sooner, even if we wanted to,” Gloria said. In another key race, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak lost his re-election bid to Republican challenger Sheriff Joe Lombardo on Friday night. Nevada, a closely divided swing state, is one of the most racially divided in the nation, a working-class state whose residents have been hit particularly hard by inflation and other economic turmoil. About three-quarters of Nevada voters said the country is headed in the wrong direction, and about 5 in 10 named the economy the most important issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of 2,100 state voters. Voters viewed the economy negatively, with VoteCast finding nearly 8 in 10 saying economic conditions are either not so good or bad. Only about 2 in 10 called the economy excellent or good. And about a third of voters said their families are falling behind financially. But that hasn’t necessarily translated into anger for President Joe Biden or his party. About half saw inflation as the most important issue facing the U.S., but were evenly split on whether they thought higher prices were due to Biden’s policies or factors outside of his control. According to VoteCast, 7 in 10 voters in Nevada wanted to keep abortion legal in all or most cases, and Cortez Masto and other Democrats made right-wing preservation the focus of their campaigns. Republicans, however, relentlessly dismissed the economic argument, arguing that it was time for a change in leadership. They also sought to capitalize on lingering frustrations over pandemic shutdowns that devastated Las Vegas’ tourism-centric economy in 2020. On Thursday morning, the Associated Press declared Republican Stavros Anthony the winner of the lieutenant governor race, while Republican Andy Matthews was elected state comptroller. The state’s lone Republican Rep. Mark Amodei easily won re-election in his mostly rural district in northern Nevada. The three Democratic House members in the Las Vegas area of ​​the state were also re-elected.

Associated Press writer Scott Sonner in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at And check out to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterm elections.