This week Keith Boag is driving from Los Angeles to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., and then on to join the CBC News bureau in Washington, D.C. Along the way he'll be reporting on U.S. election-related stories for CBCNews.ca and for The World at Six on CBC radio.

After only a few hours on the road, I stopped in Las Vegas to check on the battle in this battleground state.

Nevada’s record as a bellwether is unmatched in modern politics. Nevada voters have cast their ballots for the eventual winner of the presidential race in every election for the past century except one. In 1976 Nevada went for Gerald Ford, who lost to Jimmy Carter.

Nevertheless, it has mostly been the case that, as goes Nevada, so goes the country.

And so Nevada is assumed to be one of about a dozen swing states in the U.S. that is getting the full court press from both presidential campaigns.

What I learned, though, is that Nevada isn’t really up for grabs this election. It’s spoken for.

You might think I’m suggesting that its unemployment rate, the highest in the country at 12 per cent, and its significant Mormon population means this election it’s Mitt Romney’s turn to win Nevada, but that’s not so.

Curiously, in spite of those facts, Nevada seems poised to give its six electoral votes to President Obama again.

Local columnist and newspaper publisher Sherman Frederick told me over drinks that he is stunned by this fact. The dismal economic realities of Las Vegas seem not to matter.

'Nevada as this traditional, sparsely populated, rural, white state doesn’t really hold anymore. And that’s led to a lot of changes in our politics.'—David Danmore, Brookings Institution

“I look at the polls and Romney’s going to get his head handed to him here,” he says.

One man’s view, perhaps, but Frederick is a conservative and he finds what’s unfolding, or more accurately, what’s not unfolding, hard to take. He believes in a natural order of politics, where incumbents pay a price when the economy is tanking on their watch.

Quoting James Carville’s famous super-simplified strategic election advice, “It’s the economy, stupid!”, Frederick says, “if that’s true, then how does Las Vegas vote for the incumbent this election cycle?”

Nevada’s Brookings Institution scholar David Danmore agrees there’s something counter-intuitive happening here.

“Why is Romney not walking away with Nevada?” he asks rhetorically in my direction. And then he attempts an explanation that it’s clear he’s not fully satisfied by himself.

“Nevada as this traditional, sparsely populated, rural, white state doesn’t really hold anymore. And that’s led to a lot of changes in our politics.”

Some basic facts about Nevada:

• It’s an overwhelmingly urban state. There is lots of wide-open rural space on the physical map, but almost no one lives out there. The political map of Nevada is different. On that map Nevada is a densely populated urban area growing out from Las Vegas in the south and Reno in the north. Almost nothing else shows up on the political map.
• Nevada has one dominant economic driver, the gaming industry. Gaming is a service industry. It’s heavily unionized and those union jobs (dealing cards, cleaning hotel rooms, waiting on tables, etc.) can’t be outsourced to the other side of the world.
• Migration into Nevada has been heavily Hispanic and African American.

These are the basic ingredients of a Democratic stronghold, and the polls show Obama consistently with a four to six point lead over Romney in Nevada.

That’s not a landslide, but for this President in this economy, it’s remarkable.

Perhaps it’s time to stop thinking of Nevada’s as an “up for grabs” swing state.