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The Associated Press projected that former President Donald Trump won the Republican presidential caucus in Nevada with ease.
The race was called quickly as caucus precincts around the Silver State started to report results on Thursday night. Trump was the only prominent candidate on the ballot, and he is currently the overwhelming favorite to win the 2024 nomination, Fox News noted.
With over 99% of the vote in a contest without Nikki Haley, his final significant opponent for the nomination, Trump was leading the way as the vote counted late into Thursday night. And he won every one of the 26 caucus delegates that were up for grabs at this summer’s nominating convention.
“It was a tremendous turnout,” Trump told supporters at a caucus victory celebration at the Treasure Island Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. “The enthusiasm of the turnout… I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it before.”
Shortly after winning an overwhelming majority of the votes in a U.S. Virgin Islands GOP presidential caucus, Trump emerged victorious in Nevada.
Despite not being on the ballot, the former president emerged victorious in Tuesday’s state-run Republican presidential primary in Nevada.
Haley was not able to win the primary, despite Trump’s exclusion from the ballot. Tuesday’s primary saw a more than two-to-one loss to a “none of these candidates” option, with no GOP convention delegates up for grabs. The former two-term governor of South Carolina also held a position as U.N. ambassador during the Trump administration.
Although they were unable to write Trump’s name on their ballots, primary voters were still able to select “none of these candidates.”
The Democrats, who at the time controlled both the legislature and the governor’s office in Nevada, passed a law in 2021 switching the presidential nominating contest from the long-standing caucuses to a state-run primary, which is when the confusion over having two competing contests began.
The Nevada GOP protested, but their attempt to halt the primary through legal means was unsuccessful last year. In a surprising move, the state Republicans were permitted to host their caucuses by the court. While all 26 delegates are up for grabs in the GOP caucus, there won’t be any delegates up for grabs in the Republican primary.
The state GOP decided that candidates could not participate in the caucuses if their names appeared on the state-run primary ballot.
Haley and a few other now-deceased Republican contenders for president chose not to participate in a caucus they thought was biased in favor of the outgoing president because they felt the Nevada GOP was too devoted to Trump.
Both of the state’s RNC representatives and Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald are in favor of Trump.
Haley accused Nevada on Wednesday, saying, “It’s such a scam. There was going to be a primary for them. Trump set it up so that the indicted GOP chairman would go and form a caucus.”
While on the campaign trail in southern California, Haley asserted, “We knew that it was rigged from the start,” in two different interviews with Fox News and FOX 11 Los Angeles.
In Nevada, registered Republicans can cast ballots in both the caucus and primary, even though the GOP presidential candidates had to select one.
The goal of Trump’s campaign in Nevada was to convey to his supporters that they had to attend the caucuses in order to cast their ballots for the former president.
Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican who is backing Trump, stated to the Nevada Independent last month that he would caucus for Trump in the state GOP race and vote for “none of these candidates” in the primary.
Haley disregarded the Nevada primary even though her name was on the ballot.
Before the primary, Haley refrained from campaigning in Nevada and hasn’t been there since giving a speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership conference in late October.
The GOP presidential nominating schedule moves on to South Carolina on February 24 for a primary. Three days following the South Carolina primary, Michigan has its primary.
A week later, on Super Tuesday, fifteen states, including the powerful states of Texas and California, competed in the tournament.
