Well, Well, Well, Bernie Sanders Just Won Nevada
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has won the Nevada caucuses—decisively. NBC News called it Saturday evening, mercifully early after the days-long mess that was the Iowa caucuses at the beginning of this month. Final results are still coming in, but so far Sanders has secured 44.7 percent of the vote, with former vice president Joe Biden trailing at a distant second with 19.5 percent. Sanders is now the first candidate, Democrat or Republican, to win the popular vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.
Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg currently holds third place with 15.6 percent, just barely over the viability threshold to earn any delegates, with Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren behind him at 11.8 percent.
In 2016, Sanders lost the Nevada caucus to Hillary Clinton, 47.3 percent to 52.6 percent. This 2020 win is also noteworthy because of the demographics of Sanders supporters in Nevada. According to entrance polls, Sanders led with voters under 65, men, women, liberal, and moderate voters. He also had a commanding lead with Latino voters—a staggering 54 percent according to CNN. That's the same percent of Latino support Sanders had in the 2016 entrance polls, and that was against a single opponent. The only categories where Sanders didn't lead were with voters over 65 and black voters—both groups favored Biden. So far, according to CNN, Sanders won 28 percent of the black vote to Biden's 34 percent.
A Sanders win in Nevada this time around was expected. Multiple polls showed him pulling ahead of his rivals after winning in New Hampshire. One poll from AtlasIntel that came out just hours before the caucus began had Sanders in the lead with 38 percent, and Buttigieg in second place at 14 percent. Advisers to multiple rival campaigns told POLITICO last week that everyone else was basically jockeying for second place. And a half dozen polls out this week show Sanders leading nationally by six to 16 percent.
This was also the first year that there was an early voting option for the Nevada caucuses, where voters were able to submit ballots with first, second, and third ranked choices. More than 70,000 people in Nevada cast early ballots, an astonishing figure considering that 84,000 people in total participated in the caucuses in 2016. That may actually have worked against Warren. Any bump from her performance in Wednesday night's debate, when she repeatedly slammed billionaire candidate Michael Bloomberg, may have come too late to turn her numbers around in Nevada.
While the Sanders camps is celebrating, some political commenters aren't taking news of his win well. On MSNBC, anchor Chris Matthews despondently compared the looming Sanders victory in Nevada to France falling to the Nazis in World War II.
He went from the rumpled bit player of the progressive movement to a legit presidential candidate and liberal kingmaker. But now that Sanders wields such enormous power in Democratic politics, the question is, what’s he going to do with it? Jason Zengerle hit the road with Sanders as the senator grapples with what to do next.
Originally Appeared on GQ
