Fun with numbers

Therefore, forgive us for doing another election story, so we can take a look at some of the more interesting numbers from Nov. 5.

Some 59.1 percent of Nevada’s registered voters did their duty. Every county had more than 50 percent turnout, ranging from 54 percent in Mineral County to 86.6 percent in Nye County.

As of Nov. 7, the secretary of state was reporting a stunning 100.6 percent voter turnout in Eureka County. Vote early, vote often? Actually, not in this case. Apparently, when the statistics were entered, early voters and absentee voters were accidentally counted twice. On Nov. 8, the secretary of state corrected the error, with Eureka County showing 81.2 percent voter turnout.

This scares the bejesus out of us.

Washoe County has 16,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats, while Clark County has almost 33,000 more Democrats than Republicans. Despite this, Democrat Erin Kenny did much better in Washoe County than she did in Clark County, where she’s a member of the Clark County Commission. She lost to Lorraine Hunt by 10.7 percent in Clark, but only 3.2 percent in Washoe. In the other five constitutional offices, Republicans won by bigger margins up north than down south, as expected.

Then there are the ballot questions. Paradoxically, Republican-dominated Washoe County was far friendlier to gays and legalized marijuana than Democrat-dominated Clark. Question 9 failed by a 56.6 to 43.4 margin in Washoe, and by 61.4 to 38.6 in Clark. Meanwhile, Question 2 passed by only a 60 to 40 margin in Washoe County, but 68 to 32 in Clark. (A similar thing happened with Question 2 two years ago, although the difference wasn’t as dramatic.) Does this make any sense?

Question 2 passed and Question 9 lost in every county. Washoe County proved to be the most gay-friendly, and Storey County proved to be the most pro-pot; Question 9 lost by a mere 13 votes there.

The GOP butt-kicking of the Democrats was unbelievably severe. All of the Republicans running for the state’s six constitutional offices got more votes than their Democratic counterparts in every county, with two weird exceptions: John Lee edged Kathy Augustine for controller by 45 votes (2.6 percent) in Lincoln County, and Erin Kenny thumped Lorraine Hunt for lieutenant governor in Mineral County by 478 votes (23.4 percent).

And finally, that boycott of Democratic candidates, because of the party’s shunning of Joe Neal’s gubernatorial candidacy, didn’t appear to affect any races, with one possible exception: Democrat Debbie Smith’s stunning loss to Republican Don Gustavson in Assembly District 30 (Washoe County) by 31 votes. Whether the boycott swung the race, we’ll probably never know.