Nevada shows the Democratic nomination is Bernie Sanders' to lose

WASHINGTON - Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' decisive and expected victory in Saturday's (Feb 22) Nevada caucus further solidified his status as the favourite to pick up the Democratic nomination come July, as his more moderate rivals continue to struggle to catch up.

"The basic takeaway here is that it's Bernie's nomination to lose," said pollster and founder of the FiveThirtyEight website Nate Silver.

"Exactly how big his margin is in Nevada, who finishes second et cetera, may tell us something about precisely how likely he is to lose it, and who is most likely to take it away from him.

"But it's his race to lose," he added on Twitter, as multiple media outlets projected a decisive victory for Mr Sanders with just 5 per cent of the results in.

Mr Sanders' victory in Nevada, where Latinos are just under a third of the state's population, was buoyed by strong Latino support. Entrance polls showed half of Latino voters backed him.

It augurs well for him in the upcoming bonanza of Super Tuesday primaries on March 3, when a third of all pledged delegates will be up for grabs.

Fourteen states will vote for their preferred Democrat runner that day. They include the demographically diverse states of California and Texas, which together offer such a large number of delegates that should Mr Sanders win decisively there, the nomination will be as good as his.

Mr Sanders said his Nevada win showed his ability to build a broad coalition and a strong grassroots movement.

In a victory speech to his supporters in Texas, the 78-year-old said: "We have just put together a multi-generational, multiracial coalition which is not going to only win in Nevada, it's going to sweep this country."

In contrast, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, who did well in the predominantly-white states of Iowa and New Hampshire early this month, trailed far behind Mr Sanders in Nevada.

"Compared with Iowa and New Hampshire, minorities form a far higher percentage of Nevada's electorate, posing a tougher test of candidates' ability to form the kind of broad coalition critical to winning the Democratic nomination," said Eurasia Group analysts Todd Mariano and Jeffrey Wright in a pre-Nevada research note on Friday.

Mr Sanders also cleared another hurdle in Nevada: whether his "Medicare for All" proposal would turn union workers away from him, for fear of losing their company insurance plans under the proposal, which would abolish private insurance in favour of a single public scheme.

There were questions about whether Mr Sanders' traditional support among unions would continue to hold in the run-up to the election.

Nevada has union membership well above the national rate at 14.6 per cent. But the Culinary Union, Nevada's most powerful labour group with 60,000 members, declined once again to endorse a candidate and released a flyer attacking Mr Sanders and "Medicare For All", Mr Mariano and Mr Wright noted.

Beyond Mr Sanders' front-runner status, Nevada also highlighted an overall fractiousness in the Democratic camp that may undermine the party in the race for the White House, especially given the Republican party's unity in support of its incumbent president Donald Trump.

Animosities between several Democratic front runners exploded into the open during last Wednesday's (Feb 19) televised debate, the fiercest of the nine to date.

That animus continued in Nevada as Mr Buttigieg, who came in a distant third place, went after Mr Sanders' campaign and fourth-place finisher and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren went after former New York City mayor and media mogul Michael Bloomberg.

Mr Buttigieg decried Mr Sanders' "vision of capitalism as the root of all evil", saying: "Senator Sanders believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans."

Ms Warren accused Mr Bloomberg, who is sitting out the early races and going all-in in the delegate-rich Super Tuesday states, of dropping hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the election.

"He argues that he is the safest bet to beat Donald Trump. He's not safe, he's just rich," she said, adding that Mr Bloomberg's decision not to release his taxes until after the election, history of gender discrimination and defence of past racist policies made him too similar to Mr Trump.