Election Day Holiday Unlikely in Arizona or Nevada
- Noble Predictive Insights
- Jun 27
- 2 min read
By Bradley Wascher, NPI Data Analyst
Over a dozen states have made Election Day a state holiday, but Arizona and Nevada are unlikely to do so any time soon.
Our most recent AZPOP and NVPOP found modest support for making Election Day a state holiday: 48% of voters in Arizona and 45% of voters in Nevada selected it among a list of potential voting reforms.
In both states, voters supported making Election Day a state holiday at higher rates than most other proposed reforms. But working-class and Hispanic voters were particularly skeptical — and the political and economic realities of both states are a major barrier to making this a policy reality.
Our surveys showed weak support for establishing an Election Day holiday among those earning under $50K and with only a high-school education. These groups often face the greatest barriers to taking time off work — especially in sectors driving Arizona’s and Nevada’s economies.
Service-industry workers — those employed in restaurants, hotels, or casinos — are less likely to get the day off when state offices close. This means a new holiday might yield little practical benefit to these front-line workers.
There are also logistical matters, with both states investing heavily in absentee and early voting. In 2024, 2.4 million of 3.4 million ballots in Arizona were cast by mail or early in-person. Nevada has conducted all-mail elections since 2020; in 2024, only 18% of Nevada voters cast a ballot at a polling place on Election Day. There's less demand for a holiday when every registered voter receives a ballot in the mail.
This aligns with policies in other, similar states. For example, all-mail states in the west (like Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) never made Election Day a holiday because voting is decentralized. By contrast, many states with Election Day holidays did not build such mail- or early-voting systems early on — Florida and many states in the Northeast traditionally had low mail voting anyway — increasing the utility of an Election Day holiday.
Arizona and Nevada are closely contested politically, which further complicates sweeping voting reform. Legislative efforts around Election Day itself became entwined with broader reforms — and some lawmakers bundled the idea of a holiday with measures to curb mail and early voting.
One Arizona bill from 2022 would have repealed authorization for early voting sites and limited voting strictly to Election Day; sponsors of GOP legislation met or appeared with prominent election deniers, turning holiday proposals into partisan packages of voting restrictions.
This polarized environment makes it difficult to pass an Election Day holiday on its own merits. By contrast, many states that have adopted Election Day holidays are not battlegrounds — they tend to be either solidly Democratic or solidly Republican.
Other states might choose to make Election Day a holiday. And, nationally, a whopping 72% of adults say they want Election Day to be a federal holiday. But, in the Southwest, most voters don’t think they need the day off.
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