Former United States President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a speech during a Nevada Republican volunteer recruiting event at Fervent: A Calvary Chapel on July 8, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump won the Nevada Republican caucus, NBC News projects.
Nevada is the top 2024 primary contest in the West and will be a closely watched swing state come November.
In the 2020 general election, President Joe Biden won the state with just 50.1% of the vote, or just over 33,000 votes in a state with 1.8 million registered voters.
Democrats have won Nevada in the last four presidential elections. But in 2022, a Republican, Joe Lombardo, was elected governor. Lombardo has already endorsed Trump for president.
The Nevada Republican Party will award 26 delegates proportionally based on the results of Thursday’s caucuses. Trump’s victory in small in-person voting events was all but assured.
The only other person on the ballot was Ryan Binkley, a pastor and longtime presidential hopeful.
On Tuesday, Trump’s only remaining serious primary challenger, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, was defeated in Nevada’s Republican primary.
Haley was the only Republican candidate on the ballot, but Nevada’s Republican voters also had the option of voting for “none of these candidates,” and they did. 63% of the approximately 200,000 people who voted voted not for anyone, but against Haley.
Trump ran virtually unopposed in Thursday’s caucus because Haley chose to appear in the primary instead. Candidates can only run one contest, but registered Republican voters can vote in both the caucus and primary.
Betsy Ankney, Haley’s campaign manager, downplayed the importance of this week’s Nevada races. “We haven’t spent a dime or an ounce of energy on Nevada,” she said at a press conference before Tuesday’s stinging defeat to “none of these candidates.”
This is a developing story, check back for updates.