Once-reliably Republican Nevada is now up for grabs

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

This is The Takeaway. I’m John Hockenberry. And joining us now is Ian Mylchreest who’s a reporter for KNPR, at a polling station in Palo Verde High School in Nevada, in Las Vegas. Right, Ian?

IAN MYLCHREEST:

That’s right.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

So ?

IAN MYLCHREEST:

On the west side of town.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

So, what’s going on at your polling station?

IAN MYLCHREEST:

Well, I’ve watched them boot up the voting machines. There’s about 40 people on line for when the polls open in a few minutes, and that’s about all that’s happening. The ? everybody’s confident that I’ve spoken to from the Elections Department that things are going to work, but these are longer lines than they’re used to seeing this early in the morning.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

And on one of the cable channels I’m seeing lines around the building at a couple of precincts there in Nevada. Why do you think Nevada is in play this time around? Has the economy had a real impact in the campaign in these late months?

IAN MYLCHREEST:

Well it has, in the sense that it’s brought some more voters to Barack Obama, but the margin in some ways is still narrower than you might expect, given that we’ve had such a bad economy. I mean, the tourist industry

has had a really bad fall-off, and construction has disappeared. Unemployment zipped up a couple of points in six months.

But that still doesn’t seem to have brought all the voters that you would expect from that over to Obama.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Although, the polling does seem to show Obama solidly ahead. It ranges from 4 percent up in some polls to 10 percent up. What do you – what do you attribute that to?

IAN MYLCHREEST:

Well, I think it’s partly that a lot of people were slow to come to Obama, and it seems to me it’s a bit like Reagan in 1980, that people were leaning toward Obama but then just took a long time to decide because most polls really did only crystallize a week or so ago.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

And, you know, Nevada has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation, for the last 20 months. It’s considered to be something of a ground zero for the subprime mortgage crisis. That, coupled with the falloff in tourism, is that solidly placed at the Republicans’ feet?

IAN MYLCHREEST:

Oh, I think the ? well, it depends who you talk to. And I talked to some Republicans here online before we talked and they seemed to think that it was greed and that the Democrats had manipulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But, of course, I think a lot of Democrats and Independents seem to think that there’s economic mismanagement and too much boom and not enough regulation. And that’s what they seemed to be saying this morning when they were online to vote.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Does this crystallization and some of the surprises you’ve alluded to mean that from here on out candidates will be campaigning differently, in a different way, looking at the states strategically, with a different sort of calculation than they ever have before?

IAN MYLCHREEST:

Probably they will need to think more about the way things work in the North and the South. I mean, the interesting thing about the Obama campaign is that most of the Democrats came to Las Vegas and simply operated there. He had a completely different strategy which has made Warsaw County, the county around Reno, much more Democratic. And he’s even been out in Elko where there’s a mining boom, so obviously he needed a different strategy there than he would down here where the economy is as bad as it’s been in the last 25 years.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Huh! Ian, what’s the weather like there? I know it’s pretty touch and go in Nevada, always, the weather?

IAN MYLCHREEST:

Well, it looks like another sunny day. There’s been a bit of breeze overnight. So ?

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

[LAUGHS] Oh, no. [LAUGHS] You’re kidding? A sunny day in Las Vegas.

IAN MYLCHREEST:

That’s about what it looks like.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

All right, one of our reporters from member stations around the country. Ian Mylchreest is a reporter and KNPR, at a polling station in Las Vegas, Nevada. Thanks, Ian.

IAN MYLCHREEST:

Thank you.