Here's the key reason why Bernie Sanders dominated in Nevada and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar came up short

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Here's the key reason why Bernie Sanders dominated in Nevada and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar came up short
Pete Buttigieg
  • Sen. Bernie Sanders dominated in Saturday's Nevada caucus, while former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar failed to earn significant support among the state's ample Hispanic and black voters.
  • Sanders' landslide win was facilitated in large part by his multi-racial coalition of supporters.
  • Both Buttigieg and Klobuchar - each of who overperformed in states like New Hampshire and Iowa - have long polled poorly among Democratic voters of color.
  • Their lack of traction among these voters was proven on Saturday.
  • Nevada's results laid bare both candidates' failure to connect with key Democratic voters, and indicate both may struggle in South Carolina, the next primary contest.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Sen. Bernie Sanders dominated in Saturday's Nevada caucus, winning 47% of county level delegates - 27 points more than runner-up former Vice President Joe Biden.

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Sanders' landslide win was facilitated in large part by his multiracial coalition of supporters, in stark contrast to some of his opponents' overwhelmingly white fan bases.

While former Mayor Pete Buttigieg placed in the top two with Sanders in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the Midwesterner did significantly worse in Nevada, where he came in third with 14% of county level delegates. Similarly, Sen. Amy Klobuchar plummeted from her promising third-place finish in New Hampshire to fifth place with about four percent of county level delegates in Nevada.

FULL RESULTS: Bernie Sanders wins the Nevada caucus, follow the full vote count and delegate race here

Both Iowa and New Hampshire are over 93% white. In Nevada, however, just 49% of the population is white, while 29% is Hispanic or Latino, 10% is black, and 9% is Asian.

Both Buttigieg and Klobuchar have long polled poorly among voters of color and that phenomenon was proven on Saturday. The former Mayor won about 10% of the Hispanic vote, while the senator earned just four percent, according to The Washington Post's entrance polls.

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They both did even worse among black voters: Buttigieg won just 2% of black voters' support, while Klobuchar secured 3%, according to the Post.

Sanders' strong showing among Hispanic voters in Nevada - he won 51% - reflects national polling that shows him leading among Hispanic voters, who make up about 20% of the Democratic electorate. Meanwhile, Sanders did better than expected among black voters, but came up short behind Biden, who won the support of 39% of black caucus-goers to Sanders' 27%.

Nevada only accounts for 36, or 0.9% of the delegates allocated throughout the nomination process, but holds disproportionate importance by virtue of being the first state with a significant non-white population to express its voting preferences.

These are daunting results for both Buttigieg and Klobuchar going into the South Carolina this week, where black voters made up more than 60% of the state's 2016 Democratic primary electorate.

For the past several months, Insider has been conducting a recurring SurveyMonkey Audience poll to track the state of the 2020 Democratic primary field. You can download every poll here, down to the individual respondent data. (Read more about how the Insider Democratic primary tracker works here).

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Below is Insider's own national polling data asking if respondents would be satisfied with a given contender as president, which lays bare the issues for Klobuchar and Buttigieg:

by ethnicities

SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weigh its sample based on race or income.

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