Straddling the border of Nevada and Utah, the community of Wendover is split in two. On the Nevada side, voters could help decide who will be the next president of the United States. Across the street, in Utah, voters almost certainly won’t.
Thanks to the Electoral College system, the 2024 election will likely be determined by a handful of swing states. Utah, which has voted for the Republican candidate in every election since 1964, is not one of them. Nevada, which President Joe Biden won by two percentage points in 2020, is.
That has turned half of Wendover into a battlefield. In West Wendover, Nevada, campaigns are already inundating residents with robocalls and text messages, and super PACs are filling mailboxes with flyers. “That really affects us a lot,” said West Wendover Mayor Jasie Holm. “It’s overwhelming. “It’s a little excessive.”
Both candidates have realized it. During the 2024 cycle, Biden visited Nevada three times and Donald Trump visited four. Trump’s fifth visit will be this Sunday, when he holds a rally in Las Vegas.
Up ahead, on the Utah side of the border, things are quiet. “They are dynamic and we are not,” said Mayor Dennis Sweat of Wendover, Utah. “It’s really that simple.”
The two cities have long seen themselves as one community. Efforts have been made to annex Wendover to Nevada and form a single city; the last push, in 2001, stalled in the United States Senate. West Wendover observes the Mountain time zone, the only Nevada city to do so, in a show of unity with its other half.
While businesses have flourished and the population has grown in West Wendover, on the Nevada side, the sleepy town of Wendover hovers around a population of 1,000. Most Wendover residents work in West Wendover, population 5,000, where casinos (the city’s largest employers) are legal.
The city of Wendover’s annual budget is less than $2 million; The one in West Wendover is $16 million. A recent analysis by the Las Vegas Journal-Review found that public employees in West Wendover were paid significantly more than their counterparts in Wendover. One of Utah City’s biggest challenges is convincing city employees, from city managers to police officers, to stay. “This is one of the puzzles of living next to West Wendover. They have money,” Sweat said. “You could live in the same house and make a lot more money, just working on the other end of the line.”
In an election year, that state line serves as a delineator for more than just wages.
Experts predict that Nevada (along with Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) will be the key states in this year’s presidential election.
In past election cycles, Nevada has been a benchmark for the country. It has been a swing state in every election since 2008, and since 1976, Republican and Democratic candidates have won the state six times each. In that span, the candidate who won Nevada won the White House 10 out of 12 times.
In 2020, Biden led Trump in Nevada by two percentage points. But Biden’s approval rating in the state is now hovering in the 30s, and polls show Trump with a lead, thanks to widespread voter discontent with the economy. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll suggests the economy is the top issue for Nevada voters, followed by immigration. A majority of Nevada voters (56%) rate the economy as “poor”; Less than 20% rate it as “good” or “excellent.”
That discontent is reflected in voters’ opinions: 61% of Nevadans say they trust Trump to do a better job on the economy; 32% say they trust Biden.
“It worries me to see the press coming out of the White House and still saying the economy is fine,” one Nevada voter told the New York Times when the poll data was released. “That’s really strange, because I’m paying more in taxes, more in groceries, more in housing and more in gas. “So that doesn’t feel good.”
In addition to determining the presidential race, Nevadans could help decide which party controls the U.S. Senate. The Nevada Senate race is one of three “divergence” elections, according to the Cook Political Report, that could determine whether Democrats maintain a slim majority or whether Republicans regain control of the upper chamber. The outcome will be crucial in determining how effective Biden or Trump are in carrying out their legislative agendas.
Of course, its status as a battleground state doesn’t make Nevada’s voters inherently better than Utah’s, just more influential. “’Swing’ or ‘battleground’ states are mere geographical features,” wrote Jack Rackove, professor emeritus of political science at Stanford University. “They don’t matter because they have special civic characteristics. They just happen to be states that become competitive due to their demographics and are easily identifiable as such due to the increasing sophistication of political polling.”
That accident is fortuitous for those who live on the west side of the Nevada-Utah border. Elko County, Nevada, is typically red, but West Wendover leans more toward blue: “that makes us a swing city in a swing state,” Holm said. During the 2020 cycle, West Wendover received a visit from a Democratic presidential candidate, Julián Castro. The city’s last mayor, Daniel Corona, is now deputy political director of the Biden campaign. There is talk of a prominent Biden surrogate, perhaps First Gentleman Doug Emhoff, visiting the city before November. (Holm, for his part, likes the idea. “I would be honored to meet the president,” he said, smiling.)
Meanwhile, Wendover has never, in its 116-year history, welcomed a presidential candidate to town. Utah has not been a swing state since the 1940s, and the Republican candidate has won every election by at least 15 percentage points in 14 consecutive election cycles. In Wendover, the reality of a one-party state – mixed with small-town priorities – leads to something akin to ambivalence. “Nobody here cares much about national politics,” Sweat said. “You just go to work, do your eight hours, come home and live your life.”
Before the November election, Holm, West Wendover’s mayor, expects things to get chaotic. “It’s brewing,” he said. “I think we are going to be very affected by the signs, the calls and the people expressing their opinion.” He doesn’t plan to endorse it, but he has an elaborate plan to encourage his city to vote: “I’ll tell you where to vote, how to vote, all the election information you need: vote by mail, come, let’s go to City Hall and vote,” he said.
Across town in Wendover, things are much quieter. “We normally run an ad in the newspaper, encouraging residents to vote,” Sweat said. “But that’s all the effort we put into it.”
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