Nevada Caucuses Go Exactly as Expected

As expected, Donald Trump won Nevada's Republican presidential caucuses Thursday after he was the only major candidate to compete, the AP reports. Nikki Haley skipped the caucuses, the only contest in Nevada that counts toward the GOP nomination. Haley cited what she considered an unfair process favoring Trump and instead ran in Nevada's symbolic state-run presidential primary on Tuesday, where she finished behind the "none of these candidates" option. Trump's win in Nevada gives him all 26 of the state's delegates. He needs to accrue 1,215 delegates to formally clinch the party's nomination and could reach that number in March.

Trump's supporters waited in long lines Thursday. At one caucus site at a Reno-area elementary school, a line of nearly 1,000 people stretched around the corner and down the street 20 minutes after the caucuses opened. Voters in line, some of whom were wearing Trump hats and shirts, said they came out to back the former president in a contest that would give him a third straight win in the Republican presidential race. Also Thursday, Trump and Haley did compete in the Republican caucuses in the US Virgin Islands. Trump won the contest by a large margin, picking up the territory's four delegates.

(More Nevada stories.)