LIVEBLOG: The Nevada Democratic Caucuses

By Cristina Cabrera

February 22, 2020

TPM will liveblog the Democratic caucuses in Nevada on Saturday as the results roll in. Follow along below:

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Voters will head to their caucus sites at 10 a.m. PST, 1 p.m. ET, Saturday, February 22. Voting starts at 3 p.m. ET.
Nevada is the most diverse state yet to hold its primary election, with a high population of Latino, African American and Pacific Islander voters.
The process of the Nevada caucus will look similar to the Iowa one: in the first round of voting, any candidate who gets above 15 percent is locked in. Then there’s a realignment for people who supported a nonviable candidate to try to pull voters from another nonviable candidate to their group, or to go support someone else.
But there are some procedural differences. For one, Nevada is incorporating early voting into the caucuses — early voters ranked their top five choices whenever they dropped by the polls. During realignment, the early votes whose number one choice was nonviable will get reshuffled to their highest-ranking choice who is still in the room. A large percentage of the ranked choice early voting has already taken place, with about 75,000 early ballots cast as of Wednesday this week.
Nevada also awards county convention delegates directly to each candidate rather than Iowa’s state delegate awarding, which is based on a formula. That means there can be ties — which Nevada, characteristically, will decide by picking cards from an unopened pack provided to each precinct by the state party. They must be shuffled seven times before the picking. Aces are high, and the suits go spades, hearts, diamonds, then clubs.