The Nevada caucus was the first contest this year to have a significant number of black and Hispanics voters participate in the Democratic presidential election. This was also the first state to be dominated by urban voters. According to exit polls black and Hispanic voters accounted for a third of actual voters in this year’s Nevada Democratic caucus which is a much larger portion than New Hampshire and Iowa.
Next week, black voters will be the main focus in South Carolina, as history suggests they’ll make up a majority of Democrats voting. Then on March 1, or Super Tuesday, black voters are expected to be the majority of the vote in Georgia primary, and are estimated to be a third of voters in Virginia and Tennessee.
The increasing role of Hispanics across the nation make them a key demographic to winning the nomination in the Democratic presidential primaries. Hispanics are a growing share of Democratic voters in Nevada and across the nation. They have a double-digit share of eligible voters in more than 11 states, according to a new Pew Research study. But several of those states are large ones – such as Texas, California, Florida and New York – where Hispanic voters can swing lots of delegates.
Last Saturday, Hillary Clinton won big in the biggest county and showed she can win voters from diverse communities. Nevada may be geographically diverse, but its population is concentrated in urban clusters. Most people live near Las Vegas or Reno. In Nevada, there are far fewer people living in rural areas than in the first contest states of Iowa and New Hampshire. While Bernie Sanders won Washoe County, Clinton won the much more populous Clark County by about 10 percentage points.
South Carolina is next on to vote in these Democratic presidential primaries and it will be a test which candidate can carry the backbone of the party, minority voters. This is a state in which 55 percent of the Democratic voters in the 2008 primary were black. With 53 pledged delegates’ up for grabs, gives in a bigger say in this nomination process.
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