Joe Biden has comfortably won Nevada’s Democratic primary as widely expected.
The president, 81, was up against author and motivational speaker Marianne Williamson, who also ran in 2020, and entrepreneur Gabriel Cornejo.
Biden’s victory comes days after he won South Carolina’s first-in-the-South Democratic primary with 96.2 percent of the vote.
The incumbent president was expected to win Tuesday’s contest, which saw low turnout as voters were confused about the brand new primary system that replaced the decades-old caucuses.
The night has not gone as smoothly for Nikki Haley, unrivalled by absent Donald Trump in the Republican Primary. Haley lost to ‘None of These Candidates’ by a huge margin, with the race called after just 50 percent of the votes were counted.
Pro-Trump Republicans were expected to turn out and vote against Haley in the ballot – and this appears to have materialized.
READ MORE: ‘Angry’ locals skip Nevada vote as Haley and Biden fail to inspire
Tuesday began with lower-than-expected voter turnout.
In Washoe County, the state’s second-largest county by population, only 183 people voted in the firt two hours. In Clark County, home to Las Vegas, only 2,298 people voted in the same period of time.
In Elko County — home to 54,000 people — Tuesday was “definitely a lower turnout compared to other primaries,” County Clerk Becky Plunkett told Daily Express US.
Plunkett added that some voters were “angry and confused.” In the Republican primary ballot, only Nikki Haley was featured, as Trump opted to participate in the state’s GOP caucuses in Thursday instead.
The Republican Party will choose its delegates from the caucuses, making Tuesday’s primary basically meaningless.
Since 1981, Nevada has held closed caucuses much like Iowa, where voters gather to listen to speeches and cast ballots in various local meetings. In 2021, state lawmakers passed a law requiring primary elections when more than one candidate was on the ballot.
Biden is facing a tough road to the presidency, as a recent polls from NBC News and the University of Massachusetts/WCVB have Donald Trump leading the president by four or five percentage points.
Younger Democrats are struggling to support Netanyahu’s actions against Hamas, which could potentially create issues within Biden’s team as the US continues to back Israel, said Jonathan Martin in Politico. Biden’s team recently denied reports that the President privately referred to Netanyahu as a “bad f***ing guy.”
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