Hello everybody and welcome to the focus group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bullwork, and this is our last episode before election day.

And so we've got a very special episode for you today.

It is a twist on the focus group.

Instead of talking to a group of voters,

I'm going to have four conversations

with some of the nerdiest political nerds I could find

to talk to me about the most important dynamics of Tuesday's election.

We are going to start by checking in on what is happening in the crucial swing state of Nevada by welcoming back to the pod John Ralston, the Dean of the

Nevada Press Corps. John, thank you for being here again.

Sarah, it's a pleasure to be here and I want to just say really quickly some people like my stepdaughter doesn't like being called a nerd. I love it.

Oh, that's the highest compliment I can pay. I know this and I got to tell you from one political nerd to another. I am following you like a

psychopath. I'm reading your every word of your blog where you are breaking down the

mail returns and I appreciate that you try to tell us.

We still don't know anything, but every kernel, every crumb for people like us, I think,

I don't know, we can't help ourselves.

So I'm just gonna set this up really quickly,

then I wanna get into what you're seeing

in the early vote count there.

So the governor and Senate race in Nevada,

they're just both nail-bit. And as we discussed last time,

all of the ills of the last couple of years, inflation, COVID, crime, they hit Nevada

especially hard. And Nevada is also the ground zero for the Hispanic voter shift toward the GOP and then you've also got this like insane Secretary of State candidate that I know you have strong

...