Donald Trump won Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses on Thursday as the only major candidate to participate.
Voting closed in Nevada at 10.30pm ET, and the AP called the race shortly after 11pm ET.
Nikki Haley skipped the caucuses, which are the only contest in Nevada that counts toward the GOP nomination. Haley cited what she considered an unfair process favoring Trump and instead ran in Nevada’s symbolic state-run presidential primary on Tuesday, when she finished behind the “none of these candidates” option.
Trump’s win in Nevada gives him all 26 of the state’s delegates. He needs to accrue 1,215 delegates to formally clinch the party’s nomination and could reach that number in March.
Republicans are increasingly converging behind Trump while he faces a deluge of legal problems, including 91 criminal charges in four separate cases.
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Trump is flexing his influence both in Congress — where Republicans rejected a border security deal after he pushed against it — and at the Republican National Committee, as chairwoman Ronna McDaniel could resign in the coming weeks after he publicly questioned whether she should stay in the job.
Trump still faces unprecedented jeopardy for a major candidate. A federal appeals panel ruled this week that Trump can face trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, rejecting his claims that he is immune from prosecution.
The US Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments in a case trying to keep Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The justices sounded broadly skeptical of the effort.
But none of those developments seem to be hurting his standing among Republicans, including in Nevada.
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Nevada’s GOP decided to bypass a primary election prescribed by the Legislature and instead hold caucuses to determine which candidate will receive its delegates, a decision Trump’s team supported.
The resulting system allowed the party more control over who participates and gave Trump a greater advantage than he already would have had, but it left some voters confused. The state GOP required candidates to choose running either in the caucuses or the primary.
While Trump and Haley didn’t have a showdown in Nevada on Thursday, they did compete in the Republican caucuses in the US Virgin Islands. Trump won the contest by a large margin, picking up the territory’s four delegates.
Trump will return to Nevada on Thursday evening to celebrate his victory. His campaign has said their early efforts are groundwork for when Nevada will be a political swing state in November.
Trump’s senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said: “Nevada is a battleground state in the general election and everything that we do for the caucus and organizing now will pay dividends in the weeks ahead as we begin the general election against Joe Biden.”
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Nevada’s GOP decided to bypass a primary election prescribed by the Legislature and instead hold caucuses to determine which candidate will receive its delegates, a decision Trump’s team supported.
The resulting system allowed the party more control over who participates and gave Trump a greater advantage than he already would have had, but it left some voters confused. The state GOP required candidates to choose running either in the caucuses or the primary.
While Trump and Haley didn’t have a showdown in Nevada on Thursday, they did compete in the Republican caucuses in the US Virgin Islands. Trump won the contest by a large margin, picking up the territory’s four delegates.
Trump will return to Nevada on Thursday evening to celebrate his victory. His campaign has said their early efforts are groundwork for when Nevada will be a political swing state in November.
Trump’s senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said: “Nevada is a battleground state in the general election and everything that we do for the caucus and organizing now will pay dividends in the weeks ahead as we begin the general election against Joe Biden.”
Follow our social media accounts here on facebook.com/ExpressUSNews and @expressusnews
