WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden easily won the Democratic presidential primary in Nevada on Tuesday, his second lopsided victory in four days over a largely unknown field of challengers.
The Associated Press declared Biden the winner at 11:39 p.m. ET based on early voting results in Washoe County, the second largest in the state, that showed him eclipsing the rest of the field. At the time the race was called, Biden was leading with about 89% of the vote, with “None of these candidates” a very distant second at about 6%. Self-help author Marianne Williamson was at about 3%. U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota opted to skip the first-in-the-west contest in Nevada and did not appear on the ballot.
Since Biden was declared the winner, voting results in seven additional counties confirmed Biden’s victory, most notably in Clark County, home to Las Vegas and by far Nevada’s most populous. As of noon ET, Biden led in Clark with about 91% of the vote, a vast improvement over the 24% he received there during the 2020 Democratic caucuses. That year, his performance in Clark was enough to carry him statewide second place due to its huge population, even though it finished third or worse in the rest of the state. While the caucus results don’t provide an exact point of comparison, Tuesday’s primary results do indicate that the president now enjoys a much broader base of support in Nevada than he did four years ago in a highly competitive field.
On Saturday, Biden scored another big victory in South Carolina, where he received about 96% of the vote in the party’s first official presidential primary contest. In January, he skipped the unauthorized New Hampshire primary because it violated national party rules. He won the event anyway with around 64% of the vote after supporters mounted a write-in campaign on his behalf.