With Republican challenger Sam Brown leading Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) by a few thousand votes out of more than 1.2 million cast, Nevada’s Senate race — crucial to the balance of power in the Senate — remains too close to mention.

Brown, an Army veteran who lives in Reno, has a lead of 6,034 — or 0.5 percent — as of Wednesday morning. Whether he can maintain — or expand — that margin depends on where the remaining votes are.

With fewer than 11,000 votes counted in Nye County — where ballots still haven’t been processed — Brown is likely to widen his lead.

The race will then be decided by the remaining vote-by-mail votes in Clark and Washoe counties, which is expected to favor Democrats. But the size and margin of those votes remain unknown. Ballots postmarked before Election Day will be counted as long as they arrive by Friday. During the 2022 midterm, 6 percent of the total votes in Clark and 3 percent of the total votes in Washoe were received after Election Day.

Currently, Rosen Clark wins by about 5.3 percentage points, and Washoe by 2.4 percentage points. By comparison, in a smaller electorate, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) won Clark by 7.8 percentage points and Washoe by 4.3 percentage points — and she won in a nail-biter, by less than 1 percent overall.

If the margin is small, the race could come down to ballot curing. As of 3 p.m. on Election Day, the Secretary of State reported that 27,973 ballots require processing, or voter signature verification, which happens when election officials discover a discrepancy between the signature on a ballot and the voter’s signature on Election Day. other documents.

That figure does not include ballots returned on Nov. 3 or later, including those placed in drop boxes on Election Day.

Of those, about 40 percent were cast by nonpartisan parties. About 35 percent were cast by Democrats and 26 percent by Republicans. Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar also noted that ballots requiring signature processing were disproportionately cast by younger voters.

If Brown wins, it will cause major unrest based on the polls. Rosen had led in the polls throughout the cycle, including by large margins that both campaigns said were unrealistic. Although the polls tightened towards the end, analysts still expected the race to tilt toward the Democrats.

Rosen currently has a more than four percentage point lead over Vice President Kamala Harris – a dynamic that polls predict was predicted. But given that Trump’s lead in Nevada is nearly 5 percentage points — a larger margin than the dead heat predicted in the polls — his overperformance in the state could be enough to put Brown across the finish line.

If Rosen can hold out, it will be because too many Trump voters left the rest of the ballot blank, voted on none of the above or for a third party, or split their tickets. For example, Rosen is in charge in Washoe County, where Harris is losing. And while her raw vote totals are very close to Harris’s, Brown is more than 60,000 votes behind Trump.

Currently, Republicans have flipped seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana. While the races are still off, Democrats are positioned to hold seats in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, while the Democratic incumbent is on the verge of losing in Pennsylvania.

The outcome of Nevada’s Senate race will determine the size of the Republican majority — critical to the confirmation of several Trump appointees and policies. For example, in 2017, Republicans had 52 seats but were unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act because of three Republican defectors. The larger the majority, the easier it will be for Trump to achieve his desired results.

It is also of great importance for the 2026 midterm elections. If the Democrats lose four seats, they will have to win four to regain a majority – the road to this is difficult but possible.

But if Rosen loses and Democrats need five seats, the Senate map likely won’t provide enough opportunities to do that, making the Republican majority in the Senate more durable for the duration of Trump’s term.