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The Nevada caucus opened a new chapter in the Democratic Party primaries on Saturday with a resounding victory by Senator Bernie Sanders that far exceeded his campaign's own expectations. The demographic and geographical composition of Sanders' victory not only puts him at the head of the primaries clearly for the first time, but also casts serious doubts on the viability of the other candidates. With more reason when the primaries go into their final week, where the vote of minorities and young people will be the determining factors to consolidate a single favorite in an unusually overcrowded race at this point.
At the beginning of the competition, the US political conventions had placed former Vice President Joe Biden as the strongest option among Democrats. That impression sank after the first two votes, in Iowa and New Hampshire, where it failed to be first or second. Last week, Bernie Sanders and Mayor Pete Buttigieg could be considered tied at the head of these primaries. No longer. After Saturday's result in Nevada, the 2020 Democratic primary is a race between Bernie Sanders and everyone else.
With 60% scrutinized Sunday morning, Sanders had obtained 46% of Nevada state delegates. The next four candidates together had 50%. The final count figures are irrelevant. Sanders more than doubled the second-placed vote, former Vice President Joe Biden (20%), making any attempt to sing victory useless. The victory was so clear that the Associated Press agency announced Sanders as a winner when only 4% of the votes had been scrutinized.
Over the past year, an army of hundreds of volunteers has traveled Nevada door to door (more than 500,000 visits in person, depending on the campaign) asking for the vote for Sanders. "We have put together a multigenerational and multiracial coalition that has not only won in Nevada, but will sweep across the country," Sanders told his followers in San Antonio, Texas, where he was already Sunday night campaigning. Super Tuesday face.
In that sentence he was giving the key to his victory and the reason why it is so significant in the face of the following quotes. Nevada was the most diverse state of the primaries. 30% of the population is Latino. 20% of the population was born abroad. Bernie Sanders won among all the key demographic groups, according to an NBC ballot poll. He won one in two Latino votes. He won a third of the young people's votes. He won one in four of those who say his priority is to defeat Trump, and also one in four of the undecided that were decided in recent days. It was only behind Biden in the vote of African Americans, who are 10% of Nevada's population.
The following quotes are in South Carolina, where you can't win without leading the vote among African Americans. It is probably the last opportunity of Joe Biden, which the polls place first in the State, with 50% of support among that group. But immediately after, on March 3, the so-called supermartes is celebrated, with primaries in 14 states that will distribute a third of the Democratic delegates who will elect the nominee in July.
That day, California and Texas vote and 415 and 228 delegates are distributed respectively (Iowa has 41, for example). Although they are very large and complicated states, the demographic composition makes it inevitable to draw conclusions from Nevada. In California, a quarter of all Latinos in the United States live. They make up a third of the electorate. In Texas, on a smaller scale, the composition is the same.
“I think that if we win California and Texas, this is done,” said José La Luz, a veteran Puerto Rican trade unionist who helps as a strategist for Sanders's Latin mobilization, Saturday night. He said it with great caution and because THE COUNTRY asked him directly yes or no, but that is the feeling that the results of Nevada have left. You cannot compete with a candidate who takes 50% of the Latino vote when the two states with the most delegates, California and Texas, have 30% Latino voters and a very young population of immigrant children and grandchildren. It's like going out to play the game with 1-0 on the scoreboard.
Among the other candidates, none feared Saturday with throwing in the towel. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and millionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg seem willing to reach at least supermarkets before rethinking the campaign. Senator Warren, who has failed to be in the top two in any of the primaries so far, reacted to the results from Seattle, where she is already campaigning for the super Tuesday and declared herself ready to "fight." "There are many stages missing and I can feel the momentum, " he said.
For the first time, Nevada allowed early voting for those who could not be in the caucuses on Saturday. Warren's campaign believes that has hurt them. The senator had an extraordinary performance in the debate on Wednesday in Las Vegas, when he put tycoon Michael Bloomberg on the ropes in front of 20 million people, when the early vote had already been closed. Therefore, you can argue that Nevada's results do not reflect the new momentum of your campaign. In Seattle it was presented again as the scourge of millionaires.