Yet Trump managed to dominate in the state by tapping into the anger that Republicans feel toward Washington.
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Rubio won a tight battle with Cruz for second place, burnishing his claim as the establishment’s Trump alternative, but except to the truest of true believers his result could hardly inspire confidence that this is a candidate on his way to the nomination.
When asked about his loss to Donald Trump in the Nevada caucus on Tuesday on “Fox and Friends”, Rubio noted that “this is an unusual election”.
In fact, more than nearly any other state, even New Hampshire, which is similarly populated with middle class and working-class whites without college degrees, Nevada, with its glitz, glamour and anything-goes morality, a state in which brash, over-the-top and tasteless are celebrated as virtues, found its ideal candidate in Donald Trump, who is also, as fate would have it, one of the state of Nevada’s major employers. Who would tell Rubio, who bested Cruz in Nevada and SC and has far higher favorables than Cruz, to call it quits?
The Nevada Republican Party tweeted that “there have been no official reports of voting irregularities or violations” at caucus sites.
The anti-establishment fervor within the electorate underscored the enormous challenge facing Rubio and Cruz in the coming weeks as they try to stop Trump.
A strong majority of Republican voters reject Trump, and favor someone who believes in conservative principles.
And if he won the way that he has already shown he can in the North, South, East and West, he could easily be sitting on more than a third of the 1,237 delegates he would need to win outright.
It is also the first test of Republican voter sentiment after Mr Jeb Bush pulled out of the race last week following a poor showing in SC.
Cruz did not wait for more results to come in to address supporters in Las Vegas, congratulating Trump on a “strong evening”. He’s headed back to his home state of Texas. Now the race moves to the Super Tuesday states that have always been at the core of Cruz’s strategy.
The remaining two candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Ohio Governor John Kasich, came in at about six and four per cent respectively.
Cruz attempted to appeal to Nevada’s fierce libertarian wing, appealing directly to those who supported local rancher Cliven Bundy’s armed protest against the federal government in 2014 and a similar more recent one staged by Bundy’s sons at a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon.
The Super Tuesday outliers are Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont, three of the bluest of the blue. That’s not to say Rubio’s a slam dunk in his state. “The last thing I’m anxious about is how we’ll do in OH”, he said Tuesday.
Because all of that was before the party got Trumped.
Carson, who broke out briefly in October but has since faded on the debate stage and in the polls and vote counts, has said he wants to soldier on. It is the biggest single-day delegate haul of the nomination contests.
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“We’re winning, winning, winning the country”, Mr Trump declared. If there’s a bright spot in this for the GOP-As-We-Knew-It (GOPAWKI), it’s that Cruz’s poor showing still gave him a vote total greater than Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders got combined in their party’s caucus on Saturday. Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump now stands in first place with 81 delegates.
