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With lots of delegates and potential momentum going into Super-Duper Tuesday, Nevada's primary has been both contentious and significant this year. Earlier this week a federal judge settled a lawsuit brought by the Nevada Teachers Union that should have helped Obama. Instead, with more than half of the precincts reporting, CBS, CNN and other major news outlets are projecting Clinton the winner today. Mitt Romney was the big winner in the GOP caucuses, taking his third primary win, and some serious momentum heading into Florida.
A definitive win in Nevada is good news for Romney, who less than a month ago looked like he might not make it past New Hampshire. He benefited both from the Mormon vote (94 percent of voters who identified themselves as Mormon supported Romney, making up 25 percent of all Republicans participating in the GOP caucuses), and from his reputation as a successful businessman. Economics has been a key issue in the Silver State.
Clinton's win was far less commanding, leading Obama by a scant five points. Although the voting in Nevada was harder to predict going in, with no clear front runner and an unpredictable caucus, it appears that the strength of Culinary Workers union's endorsement of Obama wasn't as powerful as some thought. Most workers took an hour lunch to come and vote, but as the caucuses stretched past an hour, some left to return to work. Caucuses are complicated and political events by nature, and it appears that Culinary didn't do the best job explaining the nuances of how it works to its membership. Also helping Clinton was the female vote. The overall impact of the Latino vote remains unclear, but in the "at-large" precincts in Nevada, it looks like Latina women were behind Clinton.
Even if Romney does poorly in South Carolina, a 40 point win in Nevada will be hard to ignore. With Romney building momentum, and gender transcending race in the Democratic primaries, wins in South Carolina could be anomalies rather than indicators this year.
Images via AP, and Hillary Clinton
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Although Hillary got more votes, Obama got one more delegate.
Sorry, she got more state delegates, he got more pledged delegates to the national convention.
Mitt’s electable
The secularists would decimate a Huckabee GOP candidate (the "Christian homophobic Leader") in the general election. Huck is the DNC’s favorite candidate, they have not issued a negative press release on him in 9 months. Mitt is the DNC’s nightmare; the DNC has issued 99 press releases on Mitt. McCain’s the favorite of the Trial Lawyers’ lobby, and advocates for open-borders. Mitt has more Republican votes and delegates than any other candidate.
Mitt Romney has the right qualifications (the only one with non-governmental (Bain, Olympics) leadership experience, a deep-seated faith, a vision for this country's future, and an exemplary personal and family life.
Mitt has the organizational skills to run a campaign in the general election and run the country. Huck, McCain, Hillary or Obama have never even run a lemonade stand. Mitt would appeal to the Independents and some Democrats for his unique qualifications to lead our country.
Good points, Bot. I'm not sure if Romney has as much independent appeal as McCain does, but it's quite plausible that he'd run a strong campaign is he got the nomination.
Also, Mike Huckabee may never have run a lemonade stand, but he did run Arkansas. If history is any indicator, that qualifies him for two terms in the White House.
Yeah, but so does running the Texas Rangers into the ground...
"I've just finished talking on the phone with my husband, Samuel Bartmess, about his experience today in the Nevada caucus in a town called Pahrump. He was in charge of one precinct; however, three other precincts were placed in the same cafeteria. Thus, four precincts (about 600 people) were all in one room. In this cafeteria he witnessed voter fraud and slime politics at its worst from the Clinton organizers and precinct captains.
The doors officially opened at 11 a.m., but by 10 a.m. Clinton voters swarmed the place. They had been told to arrive early because there were not going to be enough ballots to go around for everyone; thus, first come first served. By the time 11:20 rolled around Clinton organizers were shutting the doors even though this was not supposed to happen until noon. Samuel ran back and forth from his precinct to the door trying to make sure it stayed open and, thus, started the war of words between him and the Clinton people. Cheating followed. Obama supporters were told that there were no more ballots even though extras were around. Clinton voters were counted more than once in differing precincts. Temp chairs refused to register Obama voters. Undecided voters got their preference box marked for them as "Clinton" by Clinton people even though the undecided did not express a preference for the Senator. Overall, the four precincts were taken advantage of by the Clinton team because everything was so disorganized.
When Samuel tried to make things fair and organized he was told time and again that he didn't get to have an opinion because he was not from Nevada. He took the topic up with his Obama precinct captain who was unable to sway others into having a fair count. He had a number of arguments with those who were causing chaos and those who did nothing to stop the chaos. Overall, Samuel does admit that if the Clinton organizers had played fair that they probably would have won the precinct in the first place. However, they disenfranchised voters and out maneuvered the other campaigns by playing dirty politics. It was a Mob-ocracy of ruthless Clinton organizers. For Clinton's team, today was not a day about respect, it was not a day about uniting a country, it was not a day about people working together as one, it was a day of winning for the Clinton team. This mob intimidated and pushed their neighbors around."
--testimonial sent to andrewsullivan.com