Slightly different (and perhaps more soothing) question: …
I lived in NV from the mid-80s to mid-90s. I had no recollection of caucuses, just conventional primaries. And sure enough, per wiki we see the caucuses for both parties were a new invention in 2008 after I’d moved away.
I’m mystified why any party would turn to caucuses in this day and age. Especially in a state with the vast majority of the population in 2 (sub-)urban areas, the rest scattered across far-flung ranches and few small towns. And with no long-standing history of the town meeting style of governance.
What did/do the parties hope to gain by this change? As has been said here, gauging the popular mood from caucus results is hard. That’s an inverse way of saying caucuses are lousy at selecting the same candidate a popular primary would. And it’s more costly to operate. Perhaps it’s better at motivating your base, but those aren’t really the ones you need to be motivating.
So what’s to gain? This wiki describes what caucuses are & the history but is silent on the supposed benefits.
It was part of a strategy to try and increase Nevada’s importance in national politics. We are now the 3rd major political event for POTUS elections and the first event in the Western states.
I’m not entirely sure why we went with caucuses instead of our former (closed) primaries, but I think part of it was because this gives people a chance to introduce issues into the state party’s platform. Theoretically, that should increase participation since more people will have an opportunity to have their voice heard, and (also theoretically) their voice is now speaking for their community that was at the local caucus.
In practice, I don’t know that it works out that way, but I think that’s the theory.
The downsides to them are that they take a LOT of time (most of the day, usually), there’s no absentee voting (you must be present) and nobody’s vote is private, so there’s some pressure from others to vote the way they want you to vote. Picture a roomful of random strangers talking politics right before they cast ballots; that’s what a caucus is.
Well caucus rules are set by the party, primary rules set by the state government. So at a guess, the parties didn’t like some aspect of the NV primary rules. Reading your wiki link suggests they wanted control of the timing:
It’s a Republican-connected consulting company, with no track record in polling elections, hired by a very conservative client (the Washington Free Beacon), to poll Democrats (and only Democrats - the client didn’t ask them to poll the Republican caucuses, happening only three days later). So, while I’m a big fan of Sanders and hope he does well in Nevada, I’m going to be taking this poll result with a sizable grain of salt for the time being.
I can elaborate a bit at least one reason why we wanted to increase our prominence in national politics: Yucca Mountain.
People who don’t live here cannot understand exactly how strong opposition to the proposed nuclear waste repository is/was. The vast majority of people in this state and certainly in the southern part of the state would have moved heaven and earth to keep that project from reaching fruition. Moving our state primary to an earlier time and switching things to a caucus did that and arguably helped to kill the repository.
The reasons for wanting to go earlier are pretty obvious and uncontroversial, at least to the NV folks, though less so to the other states who’re leapfrogged. The early rumblings of wanting to move up in the primary calendar were well underway before I left NV. No questions there. And yes, Yucca Mountain was a HUGE issue in NV politics.
It also seems clear now (thanks folks) that going to a caucus system was the price NV was forced to pay to the national parties to be allowed to leapfrog a bunch of other states.
So that sort of confirms my suspicion that national parties think the caucus system is a weak and diluting mechanism. It causes any state using it to underperform its demographic weight in the national result.
An alternative interpretation is that caucuses are a PITA for the state level party. And so national demanded them as the price in a sort of sincerity check. If the local parties were willing to jump through the very difficult hoops of running caucuses every four years, then that proved they really, really wanted to go earlier. Better them than some other state unwilling to jump so high for their masters at national.
I think you’re talking about Tick Segeblom’s bill - that was submitted in Carson City, and applied only to Nevada.
The only federal laws I have found so far concerning gambling within the USA are (a) a ban on ships that transport passengers to and from offshore gambling ships, and (b) a ban on sports betting outside of Nevada and whatever other states had it legal as of October, 1991 (and this includes tribal casinos). However, if this was the case, then you would think that other states would allow for betting on non-sporting events like the Academy Awards. Maybe there just isn’t enough support for casinos to take bets like this if there isn’t a sports book structure.
As for Nevada, state Gaming Regulation 22.120(1)(c) bans Nevada sports books from taking bets on elections.
I keep seeing commentators harping on this but I really think its a red herring. It just reflects the overall win that Sanders had in New Hampshire. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton’s female polling was about 10 points higher than her male polling. So as a result when she’s overall down by 20 points she is going to be down by 10 among females. In order to get a 20 point loss and still break even on the female vote, she would have to have lost the male vote by something line 25 to 75.
If she wins Nevada by say 5 points, it will be revealed that she won the female vote by 10 points, and the commentators will be surprised that she magically reversed the gap with women.
Yeah, it’s akin to Trump’s win in New Hampshire. He won (a plurality) in essentially every demographic and every geographic location. This is simply a reflection of a large margin between himself and his closest competitor. Same for Bernie in New Hampshire, you win a state by 20% and you likely are going to win almost every, if not every, demographic breakdown of the state. At least “normal” thing people break down (race, age, education, income level etc.) Maybe if you start measuring “piano playing ice fisherman” you might break the trend, or something.
It’s always fun to watch news folks try to do math. It’s like watching a dog do it. Lots of puzzled expressions, cocked heads, and uncomprehendingly wrong answers.
Nevada is impossible to poll. The caucuses are new (2008), the state is very sparsely populated outside of Las Vegas and Reno, the population is very transient. Plus there are a lot of unusual shift workers in the two largest cities. Who will show up at the caucuses on Saturday? No one knows
Yeah, Sanders winning Nevada would start to show me what I’ve said I need to see to think Sanders has a chance–ability to win in non-lily white states.
If the polls are accurate (and caucuses are hard), we have kind of a divergence between Nevada and South Carolina. Nevada’s 2008 caucus participants were only 65% white, with 15% black/15% latino, so why is Nevada (potentially) looking so much better for Bernie than South Carolina? How will that translate to future races? Why isn’t he gaining ground in South Carolina?
It could be that the whites in South Carolina are simply much more conservative Democrats than the whites in Nevada, it could be that Nevada black voters and South Carolina voters are not, in fact, a monolithic cohort. It could be the black vote in Nevada isn’t really breaking much for Bernie, but the white vote strongly is along with the Hispanic vote. Hopefully someone does exit polling on the NV caucuses this year (historically it’s almost hit or miss which primaries/caucuses get comprehensive exit polling) and we may get some more tea leaves to read.
It’s still unlikely to me a candidate with Sanders message will win many, if any “SEC” primaries/caucuses, not just because of the percentage of black voters but due to it being historically a hotbed of “more conservative Democrats” across the board. But Sanders can lose the SEC if he in fact is going to be competitive throughout the rest of the country. Although Obama’s winning formula involved capturing almost all the SEC states due to the large black populations there, and most states west of the Mississippi but North of Texas (Hillary carried the Southwest, California, and the Rust Belt, they split some of the Northeast with Hillary getting the largest states.) Sanders message has long been geared toward Rust Belt voters, so he could be a lot more competitive there than Obama was.
I’m not going. From what I heard, the last caucus was a complete cluster-fuck, and my preferred candidate is so far behind, it would be a waste of my time. If it snows, I’ll ski. If its hot, I’ll ride motorcycles.
