Yes. Donald Trump won Nevada in the 2024 presidential election, taking 50.6% of the vote to Kamala Harris’s 47.5% and claiming the state’s six electoral votes.1Politico. 2024 Election Results: Nevada The margin was roughly 3.1 points, a swing of about 5.5 points from 2020, when Joe Biden had carried the state by 2.4 points.2The Nevada Independent. Anatomy of a Red Wave: How Trump Won Nevada It was the first time a Republican presidential candidate had carried Nevada since George W. Bush in 2004, ending a two-decade Democratic streak.3PBS NewsHour. AP Race Call: Donald Trump Wins Nevada
Statewide, Trump received 751,205 votes to Harris’s 705,197.4Nevada Secretary of State. 2024 Statewide General Election Summary5CBS News. States Trump Won and Flipped in 20246Council on Foreign Relations. 2024 Election in Numbers
How the Counties Voted
Nevada’s result came out of two moving pieces: compressed Democratic margins in the two urban counties, and lopsided Trump margins everywhere else.
Harris won Clark County, home to Las Vegas and roughly 70% of the state’s registered voters, 520,187 to 493,052. That is less than three points, down from Biden’s nine-point win there in 2020.2The Nevada Independent. Anatomy of a Red Wave: How Trump Won Nevada4Nevada Secretary of State. 2024 Statewide General Election Summary Part of the shift was structural: Republican voter registration accelerated through the cycle, aided by in-migration from California, and the Democratic registration advantage in Clark narrowed from 12 points in 2020 to six by 2024. Turnout there also lagged behind the rural counties.
Washoe County, built around Reno, barely stayed in the Democratic column. Harris carried it 130,071 to 127,443, a margin of about 0.7 points, or roughly 1,800 votes. Biden had won Washoe by 4.5 points in 2020, and Obama by 12.6 points in 2008.7Reno Gazette Journal. Harris Edges Trump in Washoe County as Vote Count Winds Down Before 2008, Washoe hadn’t gone to a Republican presidential candidate since Bush in 2004.
Nevada’s fifteen rural counties went for Trump by huge margins. He took Elko County 17,352 to 4,632, Lyon County 23,861 to 8,954, and Nye County 18,946 to 7,559, with ratios sometimes exceeding three to one.4Nevada Secretary of State. 2024 Statewide General Election Summary A compressed urban advantage plus an expanded rural one was more than enough to flip the state.
What Drove the Shift
The dominant factor in Nevada was economic. Voters who named the economy as their top issue backed Trump over Harris by roughly four to one nationally, according to CNN exit polls, and in a state whose service and tourism economy is especially exposed to inflation, that dynamic was amplified.8CNN. 2024 Exit Polls Voters cited rising rents, grocery prices, and the overall cost of living, and analysts described Trump’s message as a clearer and simpler one: that the incumbent party was responsible for high prices and that he would fix them.2The Nevada Independent. Anatomy of a Red Wave: How Trump Won Nevada
Harris faced what one analysis called a “virtually impossible” task in distancing herself from the Biden administration’s record on prices. Operatives in the state described “red national headwinds” that no amount of local organizing could fully overcome.
No Tax on Tips
One campaign promise landed with particular force in Las Vegas: Trump’s June 2024 pledge, made at a rally in the city, to eliminate federal taxes on tipped income.9CNBC. No Taxes on Tips: President and U.S. Economy Nevada has the highest concentration of tipped workers of any state, and the proposal appealed directly to bartenders, servers, and casino employees on the Las Vegas Strip. Harris later made a similar pledge, but Trump had gotten there first and claimed ownership of the idea.
The Latino Vote
Trump’s gains among Latino voters, who make up about a fifth of Nevada’s electorate, were central to the flip. NBC News exit polling found Latino voters in Nevada supported Trump by two percentage points, a sharp reversal from 2020, when Biden carried Nevada’s Latino vote by 26 points.10NBC News. Nevada Economic Concerns Threaten to Wipe Away Trump Latino Voter Gains A Brookings Institution analysis attributed Trump’s strength in Arizona and Nevada in part to his success in gaining ground among Latino voters.11Brookings Institution. What the Nation Told Us in 2024, State by State
Economic anxiety was the driver. By 2022, 57% of Hispanic households in Nevada qualified as middle class, the highest share of any state and up from 48% a decade earlier, but that expanding middle class was acutely exposed to inflation and rising rents.12Source New Mexico. Inflation, Immigration Worries Push Some Nevada Hispanics Toward the GOP Political consultants also noted that many traditional and religious Latino voters felt underrepresented by the Democratic Party.13The Nevada Independent. Can Nevada Democrats Win Back Latino Voters
Nonpartisans and Turnout
Registered nonpartisans had become the largest voting bloc in Nevada, more than 30% of the electorate, and the Trump campaign successfully courted many of them. Republican voters also turned out at higher rates than Democrats across nearly every age group, and GOP voter targeting of low-propensity sympathizers was described as significantly better than in previous cycles.2The Nevada Independent. Anatomy of a Red Wave: How Trump Won Nevada
Trump Won, but Rosen Also Won
The sharpest feature of the Nevada results was the gap between the presidential race and the rest of the ballot. Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen won re-election against Republican Sam Brown even as Trump carried the state by nearly four points. Rosen ran roughly five points ahead of Harris statewide, and Brown received nearly 60,000 fewer votes than Trump, which means a substantial number of Trump voters declined to back the Republican Senate candidate.14The Nevada Independent. Rosen Wins Reelection in Nevada’s Tight U.S. Senate Race The ticket-splitting was especially visible in Washoe County, where Trump led by about 1.5 points while Rosen led by about 3.5.
Democrats also kept control of both chambers of the Nevada state legislature, though they fell short of the two-thirds supermajority needed to override vetoes by Republican Governor Joe Lombardo. In Las Vegas, Democrat Shelley Berkley won the mayoral race by more than 15,000 votes.15Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. Nevada 2024 Election Results and Analysis
The First Republican Win Since 2004
The last Republican to carry Nevada before Trump was George W. Bush, who won the state by 2.6 points in 2004 with roughly 418,690 votes to John Kerry’s 397,190.16The American Presidency Project. 2004 Election Statistics Bush captured nearly 40% of the Latino vote that year, a figure Trump came close to matching twenty years later.17The Nevada Independent. 20 Years After Bush Won Nevada
After 2004, Democrats won Nevada in four straight presidential elections. Barack Obama carried it by 12.5 points in 2008 and seven points in 2012, Hillary Clinton won it by 2.4 points in 2016, and Biden by the same margin in 2020. Before 2008, Nevada had voted for the eventual presidential winner in nearly every election going back to 1932, and the 2024 result restored that record.