Nevada caucuses 2020

Shortly after conceding the Nevada caucuses to Sen. Bernie Sanders, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg began questioning the results there.

Late Saturday night, a letter from Buttigieg’s campaign to the chairman of the Nevada State Democratic Party made clear that the campaign has questions about what it says are “irregularities” in the results, the Nevada Independent reported.

It sure looks like Elizabeth Warren’s fiery debate performance last week translated to a slight bump at the Nevada caucuses.

According to early Washington Post entrance polls, Warren performed better among voters who decided in the last few days, compared to those who had decided prior to that. Of the late-breaking voters, 19 percent chose Warren, while 12 percent of earlier voters did.

While final numbers have yet to be released, preliminary turnout figures for the Nevada caucuses suggest voter enthusiasm is high in the state — and that Democrats concerned about the lack of record-breaking turnout in Iowa’s contest may have little to fear.

As Nevada political expert and Nevada Independent editor Jon Ralston noted, turnout for the caucuses could surpass the 2008 record of 118,000 caucus-goers, and was certainly greater than in 2016.

After Bernie Sanders decisively won the Nevada caucuses on Saturday night, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg used his concession speech to make a pointed case against the senator from Vermont — arguing that Sanders is too divisive and therefore cannot defeat President Donald Trump.

“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.

One key trend in the Nevada entrance polls could mean trouble for both former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar. According to data from the Washington Post, both candidates performed poorly with African American voters, who made up 11 percent of caucus voters in the state.

Buttigieg, per the early entrance polls, secured 2 percent support from African Americans, while Klobuchar secured 3 percent. That’s compared to the two candidates garnering 19 percent and 14 percent of support from white voters, and 10 percent and 4 percent from Latinx voters, respectively.

Former Vice President Joe Biden — once the national frontrunner in the 2020 Democratic primary — may have come in second behind Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the Nevada caucuses, but he still has one thing going for him: the support of black voters.

Biden trailed Sanders — who, with more than 60 percent of precincts reporting, appears to have won big with about 40 percent of the vote — as the state’s second-place finisher with about 19 percent of the vote. Biden is currently projected to win two delegates from the caucuses.

Bernie Sanders won the 2020 Nevada caucuses, in more ways than one.

His signature issue, Medicare-for-all, won in a face-off with the state’s most powerful union. And the race for second through fifth place was muddled, a recurring theme in this primary season, in which no clear center-left alternative to Sanders has emerged.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s win in Nevada following his New Hampshire victory marks the Vermont senator as the clear frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination.

Alarm, clearly visible in a range of mainstream Democratic circles over the past several weeks, is now going to kick into overdrive.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders seems to have swept Latino voters in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, an affirmation of his months-long investments in outreach that could presage his success in primaries still to come in heavily Latino states.

Sanders is counting on Latino voters, the largest nonwhite contingent of voters in 2020, to carry him to the Democratic nomination. In Nevada, where Latinos make up about 19 percent of eligible voters, they helped hand him a big victory.

Bernie Sanders has won the Nevada caucuses — the third contest in the Democratic nomination process — according to a call by Decision Desk.

The win is Sanders’s most decisive yet and makes clear, if there was any doubt, that he is the frontrunner to win the Democratic nomination.

Bernie Sanders is on a roll.

The independent senator from Vermont cruised to victory in Saturday’s caucuses in Nevada, where his campaign has been building Latino support for months. As of 7:30 pm Eastern, our partners at Decision Desk are projecting Sanders as the winner. So far, Decision Desk estimates Sanders has added nine more delegates to his count, putting him in first place in the delegate race.

Early reports suggest a surprising upset of sorts in the Nevada caucuses — Culinary Union members broke from their leadership and caucused in wide numbers for Sen. Bernie Sanders, according to longtime Nevada journalist Jon Ralston.

In recent weeks, Sanders — running as a champion of labor — has been dealing with a scandal involving the Nevada Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165. Union leaders released an informational flyer critical of his Medicare-for-all plan that stated Sanders wanted to take away Culinary Union members’ health care. Union leaders faced very public harassment from some claiming to be Sanders supporters.

Bernie Sanders’s side got the low card, and Pete Buttigieg’s team broke the tie.

At the Nevada caucuses, if two candidates end up with a tie after two rounds of voting, the winner is determined by drawing a card out of a card deck. High card wins, of course.

Voting is underway in the Nevada caucuses. While we are still waiting for official results, we have some numbers from early entrance polls — and they look good for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

First, the usual disclaimer about entrance polls: They don’t always capture the results accurately and have been wrong before. In the past, some entrance polls have discounted Latino voters, appearing to skew the results for a different candidate before the actual votes came in.

Next up, Nevada.

The Nevada caucuses are the typically glossed-over third contest in the presidential nominating process. But with the disaster of the Iowa caucuses in the rearview and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on the rise, the western state has more influence — and potential drama — than ever.

Comprising 11 percent of the electorate in the state, Asian Americans are poised to play a significant role in the Nevada caucuses.

Nevada is the first early state where Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have had such a huge presence, and will provide an important opportunity to highlight just how central the groups will be in both the 2020 Democratic primary — and the broader election.

The few polls we have heading into the Nevada caucuses are clear: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is on the rise.

Political experts on the ground also say the Vermont senator is the favorite to win the caucuses, but many are watching to see if former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) can turn their campaigns around in Nevada, or if former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg can continue his momentum in a state far more diverse than Iowa or New Hampshire.

With less than one week to go until the Nevada caucuses, it’s not clear whether any of the eight remaining Democratic presidential candidates has a distinct advantage in the state, because Nevada — referred to as “the stepchild among the first four [Democratic primary] states,” by Nevada Independent editor Jon Ralston — gets shockingly little attention from pollsters.

The reason? Although the caucuses — which will take place on February 22 this year — have been the third Democratic primary contest in the nation since 2008, the state is notoriously hard to poll.

Nine days before the state’s pivotal caucuses, Nevada’s most powerful union declined to endorse a candidate for president in the Democratic primary — though it has made its opposition to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all plan clear.

“We’re going to endorse our goals,” Culinary 226 Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Arguello-Kline said at a Thursday press conference. “We’re not going to endorse a candidate.”

With New Hampshire’s primary voting now complete, the next contest for the Democratic presidential contenders will be the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, February 22, at noon Pacific time.

But will these caucuses turn out to be a disaster like Iowa’s did?