Hillary Clinton Defeats Bernie Sanders in Nevada Caucuses

Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders in the Nevada Democratic caucuses Saturday in a narrow victory that may help her secure claim as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

According to The Guardian, “with 78.7% of precincts reporting, Clinton had 52.1% of the vote, to Sanders’ 47.8%. After a race that initially appeared to be neck and neck, the result was called by The Associated Press shortly after 2.20 pm local time.”

Sanders won in many rural areas and also secured Washoe County, where Reno, Nevada’s second-largest city, is located. However, Clinton gained a 10-point lead in Clark County, the state’s largest and home to Las Vegas, as well as almost three-quarters of the state’s residents.

From The Guardian:

The former secretary of state will seize on her win in the desert state as the start of her comeback in the Democratic race, in which she was first held to an effective tie by Sanders in Iowa and then was easily defeated by him in New Hampshire.

There were ecstatic scenes at the Clinton victory party. “Some may have doubted us but we never doubted each other,” Clinton told supporters at the Caesars Palace hotel in Las Vegas.

She congratulated Sanders on a hard-fought race, but added a jibe at her adversary. “The truth is, we aren’t a single-issue country,” she said. “We need more than a plan for the big banks; the middle class needs a raise.”

“I am on my way to Texas, Bill is on his way to Colorado,” she said, in a nod to the slew of crucial primary contests due to take place on 1 March, known as Super Tuesday. “The fight is on, the future that we want is within our grasp.”

The Democratic race will first head to South Carolina, where Clinton has enjoyed a formidable 20-point lead in recent polls, and where her backing from African Americans, a key demographic in the state, is stronger than her support from Latinos.

The Clinton camp hoped that her disappointing showing in the predominantly white early nominating states would quickly be erased once the nomination process moved to states with an ethnic makeup more representative of the wider electorate.

However, the strong Sanders challenge – significantly narrowing the former secretary of state’s base in recent months – indicated the senator from Vermont is also broadening his pool of support.

Even though Clinton clinched the vote by a comfortable margin, NBC exit poll data indicated she had actually lost the vote of the state’s key demographic of Latino voters. Sanders won 54% of the Latino vote, according to the sample data, compared to Clinton’s 43%. That is a worrying result for Clinton, who has staked her campaign on the promise of winning minority voters.