That makes it quite possible that Trump’s victory tour will continue on Super Tuesday.
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Donald Trump easily won the Nevada Republican caucuses on Tuesday, finishing more than 20 points ahead of Florida Sen.
Rubio captured second place with fewer than 2,000 more votes than Cruz as final vote totals were reported Wednesday morning.
Donald Trump, who has spent much of his presidential campaign loudly disparaging Latino immigrants, seems to have won a plurality of the Latino vote in Nevada’s GOP caucus on Tuesday.
“There’s something wrong with this guy”, Trump said of Cruz in his typically blunt manner during a massive Las Vegas rally Monday night. “If you’re here illegally in this country and you have a deportation order, you are going to be deported, especially if you are a risky criminal”.
In addition to Rubio in Florida, Trump is outperforming OH governor John Kasich in his own state. Even Rubio caught Cruz among that group, with about a quarter of evangelicals supporting each.
Six in 10 caucus goers said they were angry with the way the government was working, and Mr Trump scooped about half of those, according to preliminary results of an entrance poll. That means Trump can keep winning primaries with less than 50% of the vote. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.
Key primaries are ahead on February 1 in states that include Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, all states in which Trump could do well and further cement his front-running status.
It is also the first test of Republican voter sentiment after Jeb Bush pulled out of the race last week following a poor showing in SC. In my view Democrats hardly need be terrified of Trump as a general election candidate, but neither should Republicans conclude that Trump has little chance of defeating Clinton.
Experts said the focus was on whether Rubio and Cruz would be able to slow Trump’s momentum and which of the two candidates would come in second. “I love the poorly educated”, Trump said. Cruz, a fiery conservative popular among voters on the GOP’s right, had finished a disappointing third in SC after spending much of the past two weeks denying charges of dishonest campaign tactics and defending his integrity. Trump and Cruz in particular have found strong support among such voters.
Still, Super Tuesday – with 661 delegates at stake in 13 states or five times as many as have been won in the four states to vote so far – will nearly certainly recast the race.
Rubio, already campaigning in MI as Nevada results rolled in, was projecting confidence that he can consolidate the non-Trump voters, saying, “we have incredible room to grow”.
Trump, in his victory speech, dismissed the notion that if more Republican candidates drop out of the race, they’ll coalesce around an alternative.
This is what it has come to in the Desperate States of America after caucus night in Nevada.
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“A couple of months ago we weren’t expected to win this one”, Trump told shouting supporters at the Treasure Island casino, also citing his previous triumphs in the SC and New Hampshire primaries.
