What Went Down In The 2020 Nevada Caucuses

Micah, Sanders can certainly use his Nevada performance to talk up the diversity of his support. According to preliminary entrance poll data, Sanders is at 44 percent among nonwhite voters, well ahead of Biden’s 21 percent, but only winning white voters 28 percent to 19 percent over Buttigieg.

The most impressive part of this performance by Sanders — whatever the eventual margin is — might be his performance with Latino voters. The knock against him for four years has been that his coalition is too white. That’s a much harder argument to make now. Right?

Now that we can be a little bit more specific about the entrance polls, it’s worth noting that Sanders’s strongest group was Hispanics and Latinos. The entrance polls found that he won 53 percent support among that group, which made up about one-fifth of the electorate. The next-closest candidate was Biden, who won 16 percent. Sanders had a much smaller lead — but still a lead — among white voters with 28 percent, followed by Buttigieg at 19 percent. The one group that Sanders didn’t win with was African Americans, who backed Biden, though Sanders was second among them with only nine points separating him and Biden. Probably not the lead Biden was hoping for going into South Carolina, which has long been his campaign’s firewall.