Hillary Wins In Nevada!

Today's Nevada Democratic Caucus had much riding on them for both sides in this 2016 Democratic presidential nomination race.  While Sen. Bernie Sanders was coming off a huge double digit win in New Hampshire and had some momentum going in, he still hadn't proved yet that he can get non-white Democrats to #FeelTheBern.

Nevada would offer him and his supporters their first chance to prove that he could win in a state that wasn't overwhelmingly white.  Nevada has a 27% Latinx and 13% African-American population largely concentrated in Las Vegas and Reno.

Meanwhile Secretary Clinton was looking to rebound from the New Hampshire thumping.

After spending several months organizing in Nevada, she and her campaign team were cautiously optimistic they could pull out a much needed win in the Silver State.

But the Sanders campaign spent heavily to match her organization here and air commercials in local media.   They also trumpeted media polls they were running even with Clinton in the runup to today's caucus.

But when the dust settled, it was Clinton's support with non-white voters and her ground game that carried the day.  Clinton got 52.6% of the caucus attendees to say #ImWithHer with just 47.3% going to Sanders.   It was a critical win to calm the nerves of her supporters going into Saturday's South Carolina Democratic Primary and with Super Tuesday looming on March 1.





What is more ominous for Sanders supporters is that African-American voters, who only make up about 13% of the Nevada electorate are feeling Hillary.  They broke 76%-22% for Clinton and she rolled to wins in six of the state's majority Black precincts.  Nevada's Latinx voters also broke for Clinton.

And South Carolina comes up fast this Saturday along with the Super Tuesday primaries on March 1 in which many of the Southern states involved, including Texas which is in early voting now, have large percentages of non-white voters.

We will see what transpires in South Carolina, especially in light of the fact that more superdelegates and party leaders are declaring for Clinton including Rep. James Clyburn. (D-SC) and Clinton picked up more endorsements here in Texas, where 222 delegates are at stake.  

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And The 2016 Iowa Caucus Winner Is...

Nobody yet.   It's still a razor thin race between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders with several precincts outstanding..

The first event of the 2016 presidential primary season happened last night in the Iowa Caucuses. In the 99 counties across the state, both Democratic and Republican voters headed to 1061 locations all over the state to support their respective candidate choices for their party's presidential nominations.


They started at 7 PM CST, and while the GOP one was over early with the junior senator from Alberta in Ted Cruz upsetting Donald Trump for the win.

As of this writing the Democratic contest between Clinton and Sanders is razor thin and has yet to be called.

One of the other results from tonight is that former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley suspended his campaign after his poor showing in the Democratic caucus, and Mike Suckabee Huckabee finally exited the GOP race after his poor showing in the GOP one.

With 97% of the precincts reporting, Clinton is up by a razor thin 49.8% (22 delegates) to Sanders 46.6% (21 delegates) with O'Malley capturing just 0.6% of the vote percentages.  

The 2016 race to the White House is now in the vote casting stage and the next battle in which actual ballots will be cast will be next Tuesday, February 9 in the first in the nation primary in New Hampshire.   There will be a crucial Democratic debate moderated by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday which should be fun to watch.

We'll know who won this on the Democratic side in a few hours.

TransGriot Update: The winner is Hillary Clinton.  But doing so, she made history by becoming the first woman to win the Iowa caucus.   Hopefully she'll be making more history as this continues.