Nevada’s polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday, but the first election results were not released because voters were still in line and still casting ballots. State law says no results can be posted until the last voter in Nevada has voted.
The delay left campaigns, voters and election watchers waiting on a night when turnout was still being shaped by people arriving before the close. At the Washoe County Administration Complex in Northern Nevada, dozens of residents gathered to vote in the primary election, and officials said Billinghurst Middle School still had a roughly 80 minute wait time as of 7 p.m.
The wait mattered because Nevada uses universal mail voting and also offers a two-week in-person early voting period, yet Election Day votes can still play an outsized role in close contests. About 300,000 votes had been cast in the primary by Tuesday, mostly by mail, while in the state’s most recent midterm primary in 2022 about 215,000 people voted on Election Day, or about 21 percent of all ballots cast.
That mix helps explain why the lack of a 7 p.m. tally was more than a routine delay. The secretary of state’s office had said it would release turnout updates throughout the day, and later issued a statement about some results being inadvertently released, but the official count still could not be posted until the last voter finished.
Among voters at the Washoe County Administration Complex, concerns about executive overreach and data centers were surfacing as leading issues. Stefan Gonzalez said data centers were a substantial waste for water, cooling and electricity, and added that local residents would end up paying for the power use. Ether Collins said states with Republican governors were being less targeted by the Trump administration for cuts and said that protected Nevada. The first Nevada election results will not appear until the final voter in line is done, and that wait now sets the pace for the rest of election night.
