Donald Trump has won the Nevada Republican caucuses, giving the billionaire his third victory in two weeks and a huge surge of momentum heading into Super Tuesday.
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With returns still being tabulated, US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was in second place, with Ted Cruz, a US Senator from Texas, coming in third.
The remaining two candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Ohio Governor John Kasich, lagged far behind in the single digits.
There are 30 delegates at stake in Nevada, awarded to candidates in proportion to their share of the statewide vote so long as they earn at least 3.33 percent.
It is no secret that Rubio has become the GOP’s favorite (probably because there is no one else they can rally behind), but with Trump trumping him mercilessly in each primary, does his second place finish really matter at all?
In an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, Rubio says that it will be easier to stop Donald Trump once the race is narrowed.
With victories now under his belt in the West, the South and Northeast, a gleeful Trump was oozing even more confidence than usual Tuesday night that the GOP nomination is within reach. So far, Trump has captured 67 delegates, Cruz has 11, and Rubio has 10.
Mr Trump is now well positioned to score heavily in states across the South that vote in “Super Tuesday” next week.
Delivering his victory speech, Trump told a roaring crowd of supporters: “We’re winning, winning, winning the country, and soon the country is going to start winning, winning, winning”.
He earned 46 percent of the vote in the Nevada caucus.
Meanwhile, Republicans will take part in a voter summit hosted by Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, an anchor Trump has had some rough relations with in this campaign season.
But Trump was supported by half of those who said they were only somewhat conservative, and more than half of moderates.
Cruz insisted he was the only candidate who could beat Trump and who has won a primary – he prevailed in Iowa – and said he was now setting his sight on next Tuesday’s crucial contests.
Rubio has failed to move the needle, despite a slew of endorsements from the Republican establishment, including the party’s former nominee Bob Dole, on Monday.
Trump’s easy win in Nevada did not come as unexpected since polls earlier had consistently projected him to be the victor there, and for the first time in the 2016 primary season, entrance polls showed that a majority of voters, 57 percent of Nevada caucus-goers, said they were “angry” with the federal government. The election calendar suggests that if Trump’s rivals don’t slow him by mid-March, they may not ever.
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As recently as December, Nevada was described as Rubio’s “firewall” – the state he could count on winning, even if all else fails.
