Nevada caucus results

Nevada caucus results

These results sure do mosey in slowly. It's late Sunday and they still have only 71% of the precincts in the tally, but it's clear that Romney will get about half of the votes, and will approximately double the vote count of his nearest competitor. That result will earn him about half of the available delegates.

Romney won every demographic group except voters 17-29, where he finished second to Ron Paul. Congressman Paul also polled well with voters 30-44, which sounds good but just doesn't add up to much. Voters less than 45 years old represent less than a fourth of the Nevada GOP electorate, so Paul's strength there didn't bear much fruit in terms of delegate count. It seems that Paul will finish third overall, because Gingrich crushed him (26 to 11) among senior citizens, who are more than a third of the Nevada GOP voters.

One possible trouble spot for Romney - he finished THIRD among voters making less than $30,000. He probably needs to address the (self-created?) perception that he doesn't care at all about the poor.

Ron Paul's weakness is that actual Republicans don't much care for him. 18% of the voters in the GOP caucauses were independents, and they went overwhelmingly for Ron Paul - 46% of them voted for the Texas congressman. From Republicans? Not so much. Only 13% for RP.