Facing little competition, former President Donald Trump won the Nevada Republican caucus by a wide margin.
He faced only an unknown candidate, with Nikki Haley skipping the contest due to a dispute over the election process between the party and the state.
Under these favorable conditions, Mr. Trump obtained 99% of the votes.
Now he will likely receive all of Nevada’s 26 delegates and take a large lead in securing the 1,215 needed to become the Republican nominee.
Speaking briefly at a victory party in Las Vegas on Thursday, Donald Trump said: “If we win this state, we will easily win the election in November.”
Two separate runoffs were held in Nevada due to a dispute between the state’s Republican Party and the Democratic-controlled state legislature. Nevada lawmakers voted to change the state’s voting process from a caucus to a more traditional primary after counting issues in 2020.
Donald Trump’s only serious challenger in the race, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, had opted out of the Nevada caucus and participated in the state’s primary vote. She has not campaigned in the state due to the ongoing conflict.
Ms Haley’s team said she did not participate in the caucus, saying it was “rigged for Trump”. She did well on the state’s primary ballot, which did not include Mr. Trump’s name, but her campaign limited their efforts to Nevada.
That partly contributed to Ms. Haley’s crushing defeat to “none of these candidates” in Tuesday’s primary, which did not count in selecting a candidate but encouraged calls for her to drop out of the race. race.
The situation in Nevada caused confusion and frustration among voters and contributed to a decline in participation in both Nevada races.
The measure was criticized by the state’s Republican governor, who said there should have been a single ballot for voters.
But it still helped Mr. Trump in his efforts to win back the Republican nomination. He has now won elections in three states – Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire – making him the leading Republican candidate in the November general election.
He also won a Republican caucus in the U.S. Virgin Islands, an unincorporated territory.
Even if the outcome of the Nevada caucus was a foregone conclusion, the state will be hotly contested in November’s presidential election. The vote is effectively guaranteed to be a rematch between 2020 candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Mr. Trump’s next stop will be South Carolina, where he will face Nikki Haley again.
Despite three defeats, she vowed to continue fighting, arguing that Republican supporters want to see an alternative to Donald Trump and that “voters want an election, not a coronation.”