Banners are stored at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas Thursday, May 26, 2022.
Monday, June 6, 2022 | 1:52 p.m.
More than 2,000 registered voters in Nevada left the Democratic Party in May, according to data from Nevada Secretary of State’s office.
With the June 14 primary quickly approaching, 1,167 Democrats switched to the Republican Party from May 1 to Wednesday, whereas 343 Republicans switched to the Democratic Party.
Also, 915 Democrats switched to nonpartisan in the last month, and 400 people switched from Republican to nonpartisan.
Nonpartisans are also favoring the Republican Party more, possibly because they want to vote in the primary for important seats like governor and U.S. Senate. Last month, 3,019 people switched from nonpartisan to Republican, and 1,824 nonpartisans switched to Democrat.
Still, there are more Democrats registered in Nevada than Republicans — as of May 2022, there were 603,308 Democrats, 544,406 Republicans and 526,029 Nonpartisans, according to Nevada Secretary of State.
The party of the sitting president usually faces the “midterm penalty,” a referendum on the standing president, such as two years into the Trump presidency in 2018 when 20 House Republican incumbents lost their seats to Democrats.
The White House’s party lost seats in all but three of the past 26 midterm elections, according to FiveThirtyEight, including in 2010 when two years into President Barack Obama’s term, Democrats lost 12 seats in the Senate and 64 in the House.
Republicans will soon decide who they want to oust Democratic incumbents Gov. Steve Sisolak and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, as well as three out of four of Nevada’s U.S. House representatives, most of whom are Democrats.
A total of 34 of the 100 U.S. Senate seats will be contested in the midterm election, with the Republicans defending 20 spots and the Democrats 14.
