Republican nominee Donald Trump needs a "miracle" to win the state of Nevada's six crucial electoral votes on Tuesday, according to a top political analyst of the state, complicating his path to the presidency.
Jon Ralston, a KNTV political analyst who has covered politics in the battleground state for more than three decades, published an analysis of Nevada's early voting Friday. He concluded the trends do not look good for Trump — or Republicans down the ballot, either.
"Trump's path was nearly impossible, as I have been telling you, before what happened in Clark County on Friday. But now he needs a Miracle in Vegas on Election Day — and a Buffalo Bills Super Bowl championship is more likely — to turn this around," Ralston wrote.
What happened in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, was a record-setting final day of early voting. According to Ralston, 57,000 voters turned out in the county while voters in line waited past 10 p.m.
Registered Democrats cast about 11,000 more votes there Friday, pushing their overall margin to what Ralston called a "firewall" — 73,000 votes. That's larger than the margin President Barack Obama had when he won the state by about 7 percentage points in 2012.
Statewide, Democrats have about a 45,000-ballot advantage — slightly under the 2012 margin but "still robust," Ralston said.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, highlighted the state's early-voting trends in a conference call Friday.
"We are seeing Asian American and Hispanic American turnout has surpassed what it was in 2012. And when we step back and think that Obama won Election Day in Nevada by 25,000 votes, we estimate that, with those that we've banked from Latinos, from Asian Americans, those suburban women, millennials, African Americans, that Trump will probably need to win Election Day by 10 points at this point to overtake and win the state of Nevada, which we think is a pretty high wall to climb for him," Mook said.
According to Ralston, he's right — Ralston estimated that Republicans would need to win the Election Day vote by double-digit percentage points, a feat that would mean a surge in turnout compared to 2012.
Recent polling in Nevada has painted a better picture for Trump in the state. The RealClearPolitics average of several recent surveys puts him up by 2 points in the state.
The developments throw a wrench into Trump's path to the presidency, which relies heavily on the Silver State. Without Nevada, Trump would need to hold a number of states in which he currently holds slight leads in polls — North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and Iowa — and flip a state leaning blue, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Colorado.
Here's a look at the complicated path Trump faces with a Nevada loss:
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