Nevada Republican
voters weighed in on the GOP presidential race Tuesday night at Nevada's party
caucuses, the fourth such nomination contest to date and the final one before
the high-stakes "Super Tuesday" match-ups in 11 states on March 1.
Caucus-goers began gathering between 8:00pm ET and 10:00pm ET and submitted
votes by paper ballot. All meetings were slated to end by midnight ET. Reports
Tuesday night indicated that some caucus-goers faced confusion and disorder at
their appointed sites. One GOP source told NBC News that there was "loose
rule enforcement" at one Las Vegas caucus site, saying that volunteers
were passing out completed ballots and actively advocating for candidates.
But the Nevada Republican
Party insisted late Tuesday that there had been no official complaints. The
Nevada contest is notoriously hard to predict, in part because of particularly
low turnout, but Donald Trump is considered the favorite in a state where the
largest city's skyline includes a hotel and casino bearing the Trump name.
Vying for at least a momentum-building second place showing are Ted Cruz, who
followed up his Iowa triumph with a disappointing third in Saturday's South
Carolina primary, and Marco Rubio, who has begun to consolidate establishment
support but has yet to win a single primary race. Rubio has been highlighting
the six years that he spent in the state as a child, when his family briefly
relocated to Las Vegas in the late 1970s to seek a better life. The Nevada
contest comes at a particularly acrimonious point in the campaign. On Monday,
Cruz fired a top aide amid accusations of dirty tricks. On the same day, Trump
raised the notion of physical violence towards a protester at one of his
events, telling supporters in Las Vegas "I'd like to punch him in the
face."
Once the Nevada results
are in the books, the Republican race will turn to the so-called "Super
Tuesday" states that hold their contests on March 1. Republicans in 11
states - Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia - will cast ballots in the GOP
race. The primary and caucus contests on March 1 comprise a total of 595
delegates up for grabs, by far the campaign's biggest single-day potential
haul. And the epicenter of the day's high stakes will be in Texas, Cruz's
populous home state, where candidates will likely slice up a pie of 155
delegates, more than the four previous nominating contests combined. The
concentration of southern contests is sure to shift the Republican candidates'
attention back towards their appeals to evangelical voters. Those who describe
themselves as white evangelicals or born-again Christians make up more than
half of the GOP primary electorates in at least five of next Tuesday's
contests.
