Donald Trump secures the Virgin Islands caucuses and the Nevada primary
In Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses on Thursday, Donald Trump is expected to win every delegate, putting him one step closer to being his party’s nominee for the White House and perhaps facing US President Joe Biden again in November’s general election.
Trump triumphed handily in the US Virgin Islands caucuses earlier on Thursday. According to Edison Research, of the 246 total votes cast, Trump received 74%, or 182 ballots, of the vote, compared to 64 votes, or 26%, for Nikki Haley, his last opponent for the Republican presidential nomination.
As the front-runner in his party’s nomination contest, Trump is the only prominent contender participating in Nevada’s caucuses and has a near-certainty of taking home the 26 delegates from the state to the party’s July convention.
He gained four more delegates after the victory in the US Virgin Islands.
The Trump-friendly Nevada Republican Party is hosting the caucuses in Nevada. Haley suffered a humiliating loss in the state’s primary election, which was held two days before.
In the Republican primary on Tuesday, Haley was the sole significant contender; nonetheless, she lost handily to Trump supporters who cast their votes selecting “none of these candidates,” which received 63% of the vote to Haley’s 30%.
Trump watched the arguments in a case he appealed to the US Supreme Court on Thursday morning. The issue concerns Colorado’s decision to exclude him from this year’s election due to his involvement in “insurrection” in relation to the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The judges expressed skepticism towards Colorado’s conduct and expressed worry about the possible precedent it would create.
After the event, Trump spoke with reporters and referred to the Colorado case as “more election interference by the Democrats.”
He claimed he was getting ready to go to Nevada for the caucuses from his Florida residence, Mar-A-Lago. Trump said, “We anticipate having a very big night.”
With his consecutive victories in Iowa and New Hampshire last month, Trump is very close to securing the Republican nominee.
Trump is enraged by Haley’s refusal to withdraw from the nomination process. Haley is a former UN ambassador. With a primary election scheduled on February 24 in her home state of South Carolina, Haley is pledging to remain in the contest and maybe make a final fight there.
Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina for six years, is clearly behind Trump in opinion surveys and does not seem to have a clear route to the nomination.
The clash between the state Republican Party, which is led by Trump backers, and a 2021 state law that requires a primary to be conducted resulted in the conflicting Republican ballots in Nevada this week.
The Nevada Republican Party opted to hold a caucus on Thursday. State political parties, not the state, are in charge of organizing presidential nomination contests. Given Trump’s stronger ground game in the Western state, it was thought to be more advantageous for him.
Haley decided to run in the primary on Tuesday. Trump targeted the Iowa Caucus. Delegates may only be awarded to candidates running in Thursday’s caucus, according to a state party ruling.
Nevada’s results won’t have much of an effect on the Republican primary, but the state will be a fiercely fought battlefield because of its unpredictable population, which might swing either way and influence the outcome of the November presidential election.
In Nevada in 2020, Biden defeated Trump by 2.4 percentage points. According to opinion surveys, Biden and Trump’s rematch in the state is probably going to be tight.
According to the US Census, almost 30% of Nevadans identify as Latino or Hispanic, and Republicans are starting to gain traction with these voters throughout the country.
768,000 people in Nevada are registered as “nonpartisan,” which is a larger number than those who are registered as Democrats or Republicans. This means that Nevada has a large number of potential swing votes.
