Did Trump voters skip the Senate race in Nevada?

And more findings from reviewing 1 million individual ballots in Vegas

Last November, Donald Trump outperformed most of the Republicans running with him, while also building a more multiracial coalition. Looking at the raw vote totals, some have inferred that Trump’s new coalition showed up to vote for him—and left other races on the ballot blank. Such an outcome would not augur well for the durability of this coalition after Trump.

Fortunately, we have Cast Vote Record data to understand exactly what these voters did with their ballots—and we have it for ground zero for the trend in question: Las Vegas-based Clark County, Nevada. Trump won Nevada thanks to the multiracial shift, but Republican candidates fell short for the Senate, the House, and, thanks in large part to the state’s Democratic gerrymander, further downballot.

So, did Republican Sam Brown lose the Senate race because Trump voters simply left their ballots blank for Senate?

Based on the Cast Vote Record data, we can confidently say no—this was not the main reason for Brown’s defeat.

Yes, Brown and GOP Congressional candidates underperformed, especially among Hispanic voters who shifted to Trump. But this was mainly due to simple vote-switching from Trump to Senator Jacky Rosen and House Democrats. Those who left their ballots blank were a more evenly-split group, while garden-variety ticket-splitters overwhelmingly favored Rosen. Here is what the flow of just over one million individual votes cast looked like in Clark County in 2024:

To be sure, some voters did vote for Trump and leave the Senate race blank. But these votes are largely offset by those who voted for Harris and did the same thing. 2.52% of the electorate voted for Trump and undervoted for Senate, versus 1.82% who were Harris-Senate undervotes. (For the purposes of vote flow analysis, votes for Nevada’s None of the Above ballot line are combined with those who left their ballots blank and who don’t show up in the tallied results.)

Ticket splitting was a much bigger factor in the U.S. Senate race than the undervotes. 2.55% in Clark County voted Trump-Rosen, compared with just 0.82% who voted Harris-Brown. The effect of ticket-splitting on the Senate margin—1.7 points, doubled to 3.4 points because of persuasion math—was 5 times greater than the effect of undervoting—0.7 points.

But this isn’t all we can learn from the Cast Vote Record, which is rich with insights about how voters behave when filling out their ballot, both demographically and by vote method—be that mail, early voting, or on Election Day.