As I have previously noted, we are now entering a month of contests in the Republican Primaries that heavily favour Mitt Romney. The trick for the other candidates, most significantly Newt Gingrich, will be to secure a trickle of convention delegates from most of these and hope for a surprise win: perhaps Maine for Ron Paul or Minnesota or Washington for Gingrich.
No-one is expecting any upsets from the next contest though, today’s caucus in Nevada. Even though he came nowhere near winning the Republican nomination in 2008, Romney won handily here: taking 51% of the vote, with Ron Paul in a distant second place on 14%. The map below shows how the votes were spread in 2008.
As you can see, Romney won in all but one county last time. His largest percentage margin was in Lincoln County, where he took 80% of the vote.
When looking at this map, it is worth noting that of course Nevada’s population is spread very unevenly. 69% of the state’s population live in Clark County in the south of the state, centred on Nevada’s by far largest city, Las Vegas. A further 17% live in Washoe County, in particular the Reno-Sparks conurbation. The remaining 15 counties (including the independent state capital of Carson City) together make up a mere 14% of the population. Whilst Clark County has a population of 1.4m, Esmeralda County only has 971 inhabitants.
Romney has a built in advantage in the state, given its sizable Mormon population, particularly in the east of the state along the border with Utah. They are particularly prevalent in the Republican Party: while they make up 11% of the state’s opulation, they made up 26% of the voters in 2008′s Republican caucus.
So Nevada is a certain win for Romney, and we should probably expect him to exceed his 51% last time round – he is currently polling around that level. The polls point to Gingrich coming second, although there is the chance that Ron Paul could overtake him, given that his libertarian streak should play well to what is one of the most libertarian of states. It is no coincidence that he won in Nye County in 2008, home to a quarter of the state’s brothels.
What the other candidates ought to concentrate on in Nevada is building up a few delegates. In 2008, Romney won 17 of the 31 delegates on offer then, with the other 14 spread between 4 candidates. There are 25 on offer this time (plus another 3 super delegates) and so if Romney gets 13 or 14, there are another 11 or 12 up for grabs. It is worth remembering that in the Democrat primary in 2008, Clinton won more votes in the state but Obama won more delegates there, showing that a clever ground game can yield results for a well-organised campaign in the state.
In many ways, the relatively low prominence of the Nevada contest in comparison to the four previous ones seems a little harsh. Both parties identified Nevada as a good place for an early contest, with the idea that the first four contests should be in each of the US’s regions: one in the Mid-West (Iowa), one in the North East (New Hampshire), one in the South (South Carolina) and one in the west here. Florida‘s decision to go early, even with the penalty of a 50% hit on its delegate numbers, has wrecked this.
Nevada is not only the first Western contest, it is in a state where the electorate size is small enough not to squeeze out the less-well funded candidate (unlike Florida), even if the state’s sheer size mean more media spend than Iowa or New Hampshire. It is also an extraordinarily good bellwether state: in the last hundred years, the winner here in the Presidential election has won the Presidency in all but one contest (1976).
So, Nevada’s relative insignificance all seems a bit unfair.
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