State of the State Over Time

State of the State Survey: 2014 to 2019

In 2014, the Ph.D. program in Public Affairs and housed in the School of Public Policy began conducting a random sample mail survey of registered voters in the state of Nevada. The surveys are conducted as part of the educational experience of students. Students have been involved in the creation of the questionnaire, the drawing of the sample, administration of the survey, and data entry and analysis.
 
The samples are drawn from the Nevada Secretary of State’s files of active registered voters. The population of registered voters ranges from 1,230,628 in 2014 to 1,585,000 in 2018 (2019: 1,563,733). The sample is stratified to reflect three geographical areas including Clark County (Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, other smaller communities, and other individuals living in unincorporated parts of the County), Washoe County, and all other counties in the state listed in the analysis as Rural.
 
The questionnaires employed in the surveys were eight pages long with over 100 questions. Each questionnaire was somewhat different to reflect student interests and current events. However, there are a number of questions that have been asked across all six years. The Figures presented in this section are from some of the questions used across the time period.
 
There is one very important caveat to this analysis. The 2016 data is not from a random sample of registered voters. It is a purposive sample consisting of all respondents that participated in the 2014 and 2015 surveys. We recognize that it is not equivalent to the random samples, but for purposes of presenting data across the six years without interruption the 2016 survey results were used.
 
The Secretary of State provides information about the party identification of registered voters by age and this information is used to weight the samples (party id and age).
 
The Table below provides information about the final sample used in the analysis and the margin of error for each of the samples.