Polls have closed in Nevada, which is holding its first presidential primary contest in the US west, has been damp – and oddly quiet.
None of the major candidates are in the state, and voters have been slow to trickle into polling sites. Only about 12,000 people had opted to vote at polling stations on election day. About 151,000 people voted early, the majority of them by mail.
Both Democrats and Republicans are holding presidential primaries, but the Republican competition will hold little meaning. The state’s GOP, which is led by a recently indicted fake Trump elector, will be allocating its delegates based on a separate caucus it is holding on Thursday, in which Donald Trump is the only major contender. Nikki Haley, who is running in the Republican primary but not in the caucus, is expected to grab a symbolic victory in the primaries, which her party is begrudgingly holding to comply with a state mandate.
The two-track nomination scheme has been widely criticised as a confusing and cynical scheme to benefit the former president.
The confusing calendar, as well as the seeming inevitability of Joe Biden and Trump as the eventual nominees, has resulted in a subdued election day. It does not help that an atmospheric river storm is passing through, drenching what is typically the nation’s driest state.
The election is a testament to the importance of having a mail-in voting option, said Cisco Aguilar, the Nevada secretary of state. “We are a working community, we’re a 24/7 economy and people need efficiency when they’re working,” he said. “And so they can get that efficiency through a primary process.”
As a voters shuffled into the city hall polling location in Henderson, Nevada, Molly the therapy dog was there to help voters with election day stress. Most voters in the afternoon had already filled out their ballots, and were just stopping by to drop them off.
Marla Duncan, 68, said she had texted a number of friends and family to remind them that Tuesday was election day, and posted about the primaries on her Instagram. She’s not worried about her age group turning out, she said, but she does worry that younger voters – many of whom have been disillusioned by politics – will stay home for the primary, and in November during the general election.
“Right now, I think that Biden is probably the strongest choice for what we need,” she said. “I don’t know if I even want to talk about the other candidate, who wants to be a dictator,” she added, referring to Trump’s aside last year that he would be a dictator on “day one” if elected.
While he is certain to win it, the Democratic primary will still be a test for Biden, who has been working to shore up the support of Black and Latino voters in this key swing state. In the last two elections, Nevada’s Latino voters, who make up about 20% of the electorate, played a decisive role and helped Democrats win with thin margins. This year, despite the support of the state’s powerful Culinary Workers Union, which represents tens of thousands of hospitality and casino workers in Las Vegas and beyond, the US president will have to drum up enthusiasm among working-class voters of color.
“It always has been, but this year it really is like voting for the lesser evil,” said Liz Galvez, 27, who voted for Gabriel Cornejo, a Las Vegas-based entrepreneur running in the Democratic primary. Galvez said she had been disheartened by the administration’s support for Israel amid its bombardment of Gaza. “Its awful,” she said. “As a citizen I am funding genocide.”
In November, she expects she will vote for Biden – but begrudgingly. “I don’t want Trump in office again,” she said. “As a woman that was hard. As a queer person it was hard. He drummed up hate.”
During a campaign rally on Sunday, Biden himself framed himself as a foil to Trump, warning of the threat the former president poses to democratic norms.
But Biden acknowledged that voters might be weary.
“I know, we know, we have a lot more to do,” he said. “Not everyone is feeling the benefits of our investments and progress yet. But inflation is now lower in America than in any other major economy in the world.” Despite high unemployment rates, voters have been feeling the pinch of rising costs, and the majority of Latino voters in the state named economic concerns as a top issue.
Biden met with Culinary Union members on Monday. “I came to say thank you. Not just to say thank you for the support that you’ve given me last time out, but to thank you for having the faith in the union,” he told them.
But amid protracted negotiations with Las Vegas’s resorts and casinos, and the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, organizers have been focused on campaigns for fair wages and benefits for workers ahead of the biggest sports event of the year.
“There will be plenty of time to talk about politics,” said D Taylor, president of the Unite Here union, at a press conference on Tuesday morning – noting that the unions’ first priority now was making sure these workers at the Allegiant Stadium, which will host the Super Bowl this weekend, have the right to organize and can earn fair wages.
Biden could be bolstered by encouraging economic numbers in January, when average hourly earnings rose 0.6% and unemployment remained low.
Turnout in the primaries is expected to be low, especially given that the races are not competitive. Local advocacy groups – both partisan and non-partisan – are planning to ramp up canvassing efforts later in the spring and summer. A pro-Biden Super Pac also recently reserved a record $250m in advertising across seven battleground states, including Nevada, with an eye on mobilising disaffected younger voters and Latino and Black voters.
Leo Murrieta, the director of Make the Road Action in Nevada, said he was skeptical of polls and analysis indicating that Republicans had made gains among Latino voters. “The narrative that brown voters are defecting to the Republican side, that’s not true,” he said. “They’re not defecting – they are just going home. Our job is to go to their homes and pull them out to vote.”
Linda Hunt, who has been a member of the Culinary Union for 45 years, voted early in the Democratic primary for Biden. “He’s the most pro-union president I’ve ever seen,” she said. “He’s for the workers.”
