Nevada Independent
July 19th, 2023
By Eric Neugeboren
Preview:
In an increasingly polarized Nevada Legislature, most votes in the Assembly or Senate went one of two ways — unanimous, or strict party-line vote.
But several votes saw a small group of lawmakers willing to buck the party line, according to an analysis by The Nevada Independent of all votes cast in the 2023 legislative session.
The analysis includes times when Republican lawmakers voted to back a measure that the majority of their caucus did not support, as well as Democratic legislators who opposed legislation that their party mostly backed. Democrats last session controlled a supermajority of the state Assembly and were one seat short of a supermajority in the Senate.
Of the nearly 15,000 votes by Republican lawmakers, 415 votes were in support of bills that the majority of their party opposed. Meanwhile, of the over 27,000 votes that Democrats cast this year, 266 votes were against bills that a majority of their party supported.
Below, we highlight how often individual lawmakers went against the party line and what measures they voted for or against. The analysis is based on datasets collected by Legiscan, a website that tracks legislative developments in Congress and across all 50 states.