Bernie Sanders is the projected winner of the Nevada Democratic presidential caucuses Saturday, which will give him a lead in delegates. Associated Press, Politico and other major media outlets projected victory for Sanders before 8 p.m. Saturday, within hours of the start of the caucuses.
With 27 percent of precincts reporting and 33,350 votes cast, Sanders led with 40 percent of the vote, former Vice President Joe Biden tallied 22 percent and Buttigieg trailed third with 18 percent. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren received 10 percent.
With Nevada Democrats gathered at caucus sites around the state Saturday and joined nearly 75,000 people who cast ballots earlier in the week to give the Vermont senator an expected victory in the race for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
“This grassroots movement is unstoppable,” Sanders tweeted at 8:11 p.m. “Together, let’s win the Democratic nomination, defeat Trump and transform the country!”
Later, talking to supporters in San Antonio, Texas, he slammed Trump and thanked his supporters.
“In Nevada and in New Hampshire and in Iowa, what we have shown is that our volunteers are prepared to knock on hundreds and hundreds-of-thousands of doors, that no campaign has a grassroots movement like we do, which is another reason we’re going to win this election,” Sanders said to a roaring crowd.
That movement, he said, is spreading.
“We are going to win across the country because the American people are sick and tired of a president who lies all of the time,” Sanders said. “They are sick and tired of a corrupt administration. They are sick and tired of a president who is undermining American democracy who thinks he is above the law and who apparently has never read the Constitution in this country.”
“The press is ready to declare people dead, quickly,” Biden told supporters in Nevada. “But we’re alive, and we’re coming back, and we’re going to win.”
Buttigieg congratulated Sanders on his showing but seemed to warn Democrats about nominating a candidate who may not be able to win the general election.
“Before we rush to nominate Sen. Sanders in our one shot to take on this president, let us take a sober look at what is at stake for our party, for our values and for those with the most to lose,” he said. “There is so much on the line. And one thing we know is that we absolutely must defeat Donald Trump and everything he stands for in November.”
The candidates now head to South Carolina on Feb. 29 and then the Super Tuesday primaries on March 3, where one third of the party’s delegates will be at stake. Sanders is now the front runner.
Sanders flooded Nevada with volunteers and the candidate boasted about “knocking on a lot of doors” as he praised the effort of his ground team. Nevada is the most diverse state yet to weigh in on the Democratic race for the presidential nomination, third in line after the Iowa and New Hampshire contests.
Results from early entrance polls show Nevada voters between the ages of 17 and 44 significantly favoring Sanders. Latino voters, African-American voters, first-time caucus goers, the “very liberal” and those who cite income inequality as their top issue also favored Sanders, reports the Washington Post.
Biden was leading only among those 65 and older and African-American voters.
The early voting at poll sites, offered for the first time in Nevada over four days that ended Tuesday, indicated excitement for the race in the state: the number of voters represented about 90 percent of all people who took part in the 2016 caucuses, according to Democratic Party officials.
About 70 percent of the vote will come from Clark County, home to the city of Las Vegas, and 20 percent of the vote will come from Washoe County, where Reno and Carson City residents live. Early returns from both counties favored Sanders.
Nevada’s Voters
Reporting from the caucus site at Valley High School in Las Vegas, Politico’s Holly Otterbein witnessed some disagreeable exchanges between voters and arguments between caucus goers and party officials supervising the site over the vote tallying.
Earlier this week, Sanders revealed that U.S. intelligence officials told him Russia was actively trying to influence in the election in his favor.
Sanders went into the Nevada caucuses looking for a big day. Sanders was polling at about 30 percent of the total vote, about 14 percent ahead of Biden and Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who entered the race late, was not competing in Nevada.
A strong showing by the candidates was particularly important in Nevada, which has a far more diverse population than the first caucus state, Iowa, and the second state to vote, New Hampshire. The Nevada caucuses were a test of a candidate’s strength, particularly among Hispanic voters.
Nevada’s electorate in 2016 was 41 percent non-white, including 13 percent black.
The fight for the nomination is still at the stage in which exceeding expectations — or not — can be as important to the candidates as finishing on top. Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar performed better than expected heading into Nevada and were looking to avoid tanking in the first truly diverse state to vote.
Just after 7 p.m. Eastern, Klobuchar spoke to supporters in Minnesota, telling them the vote in Nevada looked good, though it appeared she would not be among the top tier of finishers.
“As usual, I think we have exceeded expectations,” she said. “I always note that a lot of people didn’t even think I’d still be standing at this point.”
Still-unofficial results in Iowa show Buttigieg and Sanders virtually tied for the top; Sanders narrowly won New Hampshire, followed closely by Buttigieg and then Klobuchar.
Could Nevada Be Another Iowa?
There was concern that Nevada could have similar problems to the debacle in Iowa, where The Associated Press has yet to call a winner nearly a full month after that state’s caucuses.
The Nevada Democratic Party scrapped plans to use the same app as the one that failed in Iowa, going lower-tech. According to a memo from the party, election officials would be using good-old-fashioned paper and had planned to use a “Google web form” — now referred to as a “caucus calculator” — to relay results. At the last minute, party officials discussed ditching the form in favor of telephone reporting.
“I have a lot of confidence in Nevada — a really, really strong party,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said on CNN Wednesday. “We have gone to school on the lessons of Iowa. We’re as low tech as humanly possible while still preserving efficiency.”
From Nevada, the candidates head to South Carolina for the Feb. 29 vote. Polling there shows Biden’s once-substantial lead has narrowed considerably. Biden now holds a slight edge over Sanders and Tom Steyer, according to a Winthrop University poll released Thursday.
Heading into Nevada, and pending official results from Iowa, Buttigieg led the delegate race with 22, followed by Sanders, with 21. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren had 7 delegates, Klobuchar 7 and Biden 6.
To win the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention, a candidate needs 1,991 pledged delegates.
How To Caucus
In the Saturday caucuses, participants filled out preference cards with their first choice for president. Voter’s were free to realign, or pick another candidate, if their first choice failed to attract enough support.
The early votes were being added to the first vote tally. For early voters, their second and third preferences — which they added to their ballots — were to be taken into account if their first preference performed too poorly.
The Nevada caucuses, similar to the Iowa caucuses, are run by the state political parties. Early voters and those who took part in Saturday’s caucuses select delegates who are nominated to the country convention.
From the county convention, delegates are nominated for the state convention. Those delegates are then nominated to the national party convention, where the eventual nominee is selected.
Nevada GOP ‘All In’ For Trump
Meanwhile, Nevada’s Republican Central Committee decided Saturday evening on a unanimous voice vote to bind all 25 of its delegates to President Trump. Last year, the party decided not to caucus.
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