Early Voting in Nevada 2026 (1st Week of Early Voting)

Posted on October 24, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Since the election changes brought in the wake of the Covid lockdowns, there are only two general elections in Nevada, and only one undertaken during a midterm. While comparisons can be made, the numbers from 2022 may not be reflective of trends in 2026. With that caveat, let us look at where things stand after the 1st full week of early voting in Nevada.

      N.B. The numbers are accurate as of time of retrieval, which will vary throughout the day.

Statewide

     Nevada’s early votes are split between in-person early voting and mail ballots. After the first week of early voting is outnumbering in-person voting (including mail ballots dropped off at in-person polling locations) by about 8 to 5; in comparison, at this point in 2022, the ratio was lower at ca 3 to 2. In total, Democrats have built up a lead of ca 4% ca 14,000 votes. The total mail ballots for the first week of 2022 are incomplete since the mail ballots for Washoe Republicns was missing, but with an estimated 10K votes, the Dems likely had a ca 10% lead overall.

     This is in large part due to the overall lower voting rate for Democrat heavy Clark County, though this affects Republicans as well, which will have major effects in the legislative races.

     Overall, Republicans continue to increasingly accept voting early by mail, or at least with mail ballots in-person at early voting sites. However, this has concomitantly resulted in their previous overwhelming leads in in-person early voting dropping precipitously, which is explored in greater detail below.

     The major question is, since the in-person and mail voting trends have clearly changed from 2022, it is an open question what Election Day turnout will be. In 2022, the GOP netted ca 48,000 voters; in 2024, the Election Day turnout was almost even with less than 2000 voter difference. Is this simply a function of Presidential turnout vs mid-term turnout, or a more general trend of people voting early rather than on Election Day. This analysis is slightly complicated since mail ballots include both those sent in by mail as well as those dropped off in person at election sties (both early and Election Day).

     All else equal, the Democrats’ lead is smaller than what it was in 2022. The caveat, though, is that in 2022 the Republicans had a huge Election Day turnout that flipped the total voter lead from Democrat to Republican while in 2024 the Election Day difference was negligible. A reminder that in 2022, while Republicans flipped the Governor’s seat (the only top-of-the ticket flip that year from Democrat to Republican) and won two other statewide partisan races, they lost four others including the U.S. Senate race, as well as losing all competitive state Senate seats and ending up in the super-minority in the state Assembly (despite having more votes cast for the GOP in Assembly races than for the Democrats). Without an Election Day turnout lead at leas ca half-way by percentage between those of 2022 and 2024, the Republican party will be in trouble, especially down ballot in Clark County where the majority of legislative seats are.

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Firing Line Friday: Resolved: That Social Security Should Be Privatized

Posted on October 23, 2026 by The Political Hat

     In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.

     The increasing bipartisan popularity of welfare has increased focus on the looming shortfall for Social Security. Let us look back thirty years ago when moderator Michael E. Kinsley over saw William F. Buckley, Jr., John C. Goodman, Robert Kuttner, Robert Eisner, Henry J. Aaron, Theordore R. Marmor, Pieerre S. Du Pont, and Peter G. Peterson debated the resolution that Social Security should be privatized.

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Quick Takes – Academic Praxis: Special Ed. Equity Audit; DEI Renamed; Trashing YAF

Posted on October 22, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: Wokes of the world unite?

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

     Now wokeness is coming for the most vulnerable and innocent amongst us.

“Future special education teachers at Kennesaw State University aren’t just being taught how to work with students with disabilities – they are also being trained to look for ‘inequity,’ examine ‘privilege,’ identify ‘microaggressions’ and conduct schoolwide ‘equity audits.’

“A fall 2026 class, titled ‘Addressing the Academic Needs of All Learners,’ focuses on academic and behavioral outcomes for ‘diverse learners including students with disabilities’ and emphasizes how schools can ‘equitably educate diverse learners.’

“In one assignment, students select a college syllabus and use what they have learned to ‘infuse’ it with issues of diversity, proposing changes to the course’s pedagogy, content, activities and required assignments. Another portion of the course introduces students to ‘power, privilege, and difference’ and asks them to examine the ‘existence of privilege” and complete activities concerning racial “microaggressions.‘”’

“The syllabus later moves into race, racism, gender socialization and the ‘social construction of disability.’ Assigned readings include a paper examining the intersections between ‘whiteness and disability studies’ and a work discussing ‘community cultural wealth’ through critical race theory.

“The course also requires a ‘Schoolwide Equity Audit and Reflection Paper’ worth 120 points, a quarter of the course’s 480 total points.”

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The Left And The Molding Of Mankind

Posted on October 20, 2026 by The Political Hat

     That human beings are born as a blank slate (i.e. Tabula Rasa) that can be moulded, or re-moulded after their collective slates have been wiped clean, is a long standing tenet of the broader Left that rejects that human beings have any, or least any appreciable, innate nature, as James Lindsay describes below (which is quoted in full due to the limitation of Twitter’s/X’s embed).

The Leftist mindset is that people are the product of their conditions. I don’t mean this in some cutesy way that’s kind of true, that we are shaped by our conditions. They believe fully literally that we are the product of our conditions, and “conditions” are those things that shape systemic political power.

That applies to every aspect of life, down to how we think the world works, the vocabulary we might use to communicate, what our hopes and fears are, what’s true and false, what’s right and wrong, everything. In particular, it defines something like a horizon of possibility that people hold for their lives. Their present conditions prevent them from seeing beyond that horizon, so they accept the limitations of the present world (real, fake, or whatever).

They believe that every existing society operates like a brainwashing bubble that “socializes” its members into this set of conceptual and imaginative limitations, and they believe that the people who control society control and maintain the terms upon which people are constructed and defined (through socialization into that society).

Every harm, every injustice, everything they don’t understand, every foiled hope, every dream that isn’t actually possible, etc., is therefore an indictment of the people who hold power over the existing society. Anything that threatens the existing socialization program is therefore potentially good or useful and can be brought into use for Leftist ends.

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Fear the Boom and Bust

Posted on October 19, 2026 by The Political Hat

     The question of the roll of the government in managing the economy is as hot a topic now as it has been through our history.

     Here is a debate between John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek… in rap format!

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News of the Week (October 18th, 2026)

Posted on October 18, 2026 by The Political Hat
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Firing Line Friday: The Failure of Organized Religion

Posted on October 16, 2026 by The Political Hat

     In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.

     The question of personal faith and organized religion can be a deeply personal one. Let us look back sixty years ago when William F. Buckley, Jr. debated his old philosophy teacher, Paul Weiss, who posed as a question the failure of organized religion.

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Quick Takes – Canada Keeps Killing: Can’t Cook? Death! Eating Disorder? Death! Demented? Death!

Posted on October 15, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: In America it’s “give me liberty or give me death”; in Canada it’s “give me a sensible culinary experience or give me death”.

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

Death, Rx

     Remember when euthanasia was sold as being for the terminally ill who were suffering in pain?   Apparently not being able to cook for your family is considered suffering worthy of death.

“Top Canadian doctors are raising alarm bells over the country’s seemingly quick approval for assisted dying requests, after one elderly woman was accepted based on the fact that she lost the ability to cook meals for her family.

“…

“One such case saw a woman in her 70s struggling with losing her ability to cook for her family, something she prided herself on as the matriarch of her family.

“When she was approved for assisted dying, she told doctors that she felt she had lost her value to her family. “

     Thankfully, she received legitimate counciling that convinced her that her life’s worth was more than the sum of the meals she can cook.

“Through counseling, she came to understand that her family valued who she was, not what she did for them. She decided not to go through with ending her life, at least for now.

“That Christmas, her family gathered and she sat proudly at the table while others did the cooking and serving.”

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Why Postliberalism Failed

Posted on October 13, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Patrick Deneen is a Leftist. He invents a reductio ad absurdum that all “liberalism”, from Locke to Marx, are based on a near eschcatalogial obsession of atomized autonomous individuals freed from “family, tradition, religion, local community and even the limits of nature” to reach some religious apotheosis. This false dilemma fallacy ignores that Deneen’s critique is the same critique the collectivist Leftists use against classical liberalism more broadly, and conservatism in the American and Burkean vein more specifically. It isn’t that Locke and Marx are alike, but that they are different that explains why the later fails then, just as Deneen’s ideology fails nascently, as Kim R. Holmes observes (which is quoted in full due to the limitations of Twitter’s/X’s embeds).

I have a shorter and more correct answer. “Liberalism” failed because it deviated from classical liberalism (limited government and all that) and drifted into progressive socialist and Identitarian territory, derived not from Locke but from Marx, Gramsci and Marcuse. A reason why many post-liberals like Deneen don’t acknowledge that is because their social and economic worldview is functionally closer to those guys than to Locke, Jefferson and Madison.

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Camouflage Socialism

Posted on October 12, 2026 by The Political Hat

     The embrace of literal socialism by many on the purported “Right” is, at this point, hard to ignore. Yet the word “socialism” remains so toxic to so many outside of the Left, so the Socialist Right must deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate their socialism by trying to redefine it as “stuff we don’t like”. or more specifically using the state to control society other than they’d direct.

     Case in point is this rambling incoherent answer from J.D. Vance on how he’s define “socialism”:

     Organizing society to benefit the domestic worker is quintessential socialism. To many, it’s clear that it’s just a catch-all for social outcome they don’t fancy, and that it’s not socialism when they do it for the “common good”.

“Contrary to the vice president, ‘socialism,’ a theory of socioeconomic organization in which the state, to varying degrees, owns property and enterprise and redistributes private wealth and goods based on central planners’ determinations, is not a ‘hard term to define these days.’

“‘Classically, you would think, socialism is about prioritizing workers,’ Vance said. That sounds nice! But in the vice president’s view, today’s self-proclaimed socialists have perverted the philosophy’s noble intentions. ‘So, I don’t know what the term means anymore.’”

     Socialism becomes the opposite of what it is in order to justify socialism in deed while condemning it in name, much like how war is peace or up is down.

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