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Opinion

Pondering Bernie Sanders

The Bernie Sanders campaign train seems to be chugging along just fine, even with close finishes compared to Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa Caucus. 

It is clear in my eyes that Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner to win the Democratic nomination, as his campaign seems to be able to shake off any bumps and has consistently performed well during the polling season, though the upcoming South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday could prove me wrong.

Sanders won the popular vote in both Iowa and New Hampshire according to the New York Times, with a lead of 6,000 in the first caucus round in Iowa, a lead of 2,000 in the second caucus round in Iowa, and a lead of 4,000 in New Hampshire.

Despite this, Sanders still had a one delegate deficit behind Pete Buttigieg before the Nevada caucuses. While some called foul play in regards to the apportionment of delegates by the DNC in Iowa following the breakdown of the app used to report caucus results, I will not address this claim in this article, as while I can see the reasoning, I wish to examine the future instead of the past and focus on the results from Nevada and the effects it will have on the rest of the primary process.

Nevada is a landmark in the campaign trail, as Sanders absolutely dominated. According to the New York Times, Sanders got more than 20,000 more votes as the second place candidate did, and received around 40 percent of all votes cast in the state. This is a huge victory for the campaign, and highlights what I think is one of Sanders’ strongest points, which is his popularity amongst voters of color. 

Iowa or New Hampshire both have demographic makeups that are 90 percent white, making them far less diverse and representative of the country as a whole, with Nevada having just under 50 percent of the population being white, and almost 30% of the population being Hispanic or Latino. 

I think that the fact that Sanders won by a much wider margin in a more diverse state makes a lot of sense, and I do think that the two are correlated. This will put a ton of pressure on other Presidential campaigns to perform well in South Carolina, particularly Joe Biden’s. I expect this large amount of support from minorities to translate well into votes in South Carolina, and therefore votes in Super Tuesday, but really only time will tell.