In order to support a group of Republican candidates, former President Donald Trump travelled to Minden, Nevada, on Saturday. Minden has a population of just under 3,500, or approximately 0.1% of the state.
It’s a brief stop for the former President, who won the White House in 2016 by riding higher-than-expected turnout in rural areas of the nation like Minden. However, it demonstrates how crucial rural counties are to Nevada Republicans running for office in the crucial midterm elections, including Adam Laxalt for the Senate and Joe Lombardo for governor.
During a visit to Winnemucca, a mining community of less than 8,000 people in northern Humboldt County, late last year, Laxalt stated, “We feel that rural Nevada is the key to turning our state back.”
One of the largest tests for Democratic strength in the 2022 midterms will be Nevada, which Trump lost twice. Due to the power of the late Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid’s so-called Reid Machine, the party dominates all but one statewide offices in Nevada, and Democratic presidential nominees have won the state in every election since 2008. However, those Democratic margins have been shrinking, and after the coronavirus pandemic-related closures severely hurt Nevada’s tourism-based economy, Republicans now believe they have a good chance of winning the state. They are banking on Lombardo’s campaign to unseat Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak and Laxalt’s bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.
According to a Thursday AWN poll, there was no obvious front-runner in either race: 48% of probable voters supported Laxalt and Lombardo, compared to 46% for Cortez Masto and Sisolak.
The same poll contained numerous red flags for Democrats. In Nevada, 44% of registered voters said that the country would be better off if Republicans controlled Congress, while 35% disagreed. In Nevada, 62% of Republican voters compared to 52% of Democrats stated they were strongly motivated to cast their ballots. Furthermore, according to 41% of respondents, the economy was the most crucial topic in the midterm elections, which Republicans have used as ammunition against Democrats.
