Live blog: Trump wins South Carolina; Clinton holds off Sanders in Nevada

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush suspends his campaign Saturday night in Columbia, S.C. (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)

As former Florida governor Jeb Bush suspended his presidential bid Saturday night, new details were trickling in about the massive investments the Right to Rise super PAC made to prop up his candidacy.

As of Saturday, the group had raced through at least $95.7 million out of the $118.6 million it had collected by the end of January, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Almost $87 million went into a barrage of television ads, online videos, slick mailers and voter phone calls. The group flew an airplane with a banner mocking Donald Trump over a rally of his supporters, produced a 15-minute documentary detailing Bush’s biography, sent Bush supporters individual video players, took out a billboard mocking Trump and crammed the airwaves in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. In the final days, Right to Rise kept the spigot on, dumping another $1.9 million into South Carolina and Nevada.

To no avail. Bush’s favorable rating actually plummeted over the course of the campaign, falling from 63 percent in July to 44 percent in January, according to Washington Post-ABC News polls of Republicans nationally.

[Jeb Bush suspends 2016 campaign]

The super PAC’s failure to help Bush gain traction will be one of the most scrutinized aspects of his failed candidacy, in part because he built his strategy around having the well-funded group by his side. The former governor installed his longtime adviser Mike Murphy at its helm, and spent the first half of last year helping sock millions of dollars into the super PAC — all while maintaining he had still not decided to run.

“You might as well frontload it if you can,” Bush said last year.

Murphy, meanwhile, expressed confidence that the super PAC’s financial might would be overpowering. “Our job is just to amplify his story and what he’s saying and we banked enough cash that nobody’s turning our speaker off,” he told Bloomberg Politics in October.

As Bush failed to gain traction, the super PAC’s donations dried up. It still had $24.4 million at the end of January, but collected just $370,000 that month. The majority, $250,000, was donated by Michigan businessman and Orlando Magic basketball team owner Richard DeVos.

DeVos was already looking elsewhere, however. On the same day, he gave another $250,000 to a super PAC allied with Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

Scott Clement and Anu Narayanswamy contributed to this report.

Could Trump pick up any voters from exiting candidates? Tonight, he said he mighto. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

The only way that Donald Trump will not win the nomination, it seems, is if the voters that support Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and John Kasich rally around Kasich or Rubio moving forward.

This isn’t foolproof: Adding up Rubio, Bush and Kasich in national polling, for example, totals 30 percent, to Trump’s 34 percent. But in South Carolina it would have dropped Trump to second place, which is about as good as the Republican establishment could hope for.

With Jeb Bush now out of the race and Ben Carson out of the race in the eyes of literally every person paying attention to the presidential race, save Ben Carson (if he’s even paying attention), it’s worth wondering where their supporters might go. The thinking is that all those Bush supporters will go to a Rubio or Kasich, for example. But is that true?

Full story here

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Marco who?

Before he took the stage, Ted Cruz’s campaign surrogates told a crowd snacking on popcorn and cheddar cheese goldfish — no alcohol served — that the GOP presidential race is now a two-man battle between Cruz and Donald Trump.

“Tonight after South Carolina it’s a two-man race between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz will win this nomination,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at the South Carolina state fairgrounds in Columbia. “Regardless of what the pundits say, it’s a two-man race.”

Cruz’s surrogates argued that the Texas Republican took on Rubio — “the establishment candidate” — and his South Carolina surrogates, including Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott. And, they point out, winning South Carolina didn’t mean a thing last time around.

“Four years ago, Newt Gingrich won South Carolina. How’d that work out?” asked South Carolina state senator Lee Bright.

He surprised many in the room with his announcement tonight. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

As he departed the ballroom where he suspended his campaign tonight, Jeb Bush had tears in his eyes. On the rope line, he apologized to staffers and supporters, but told one friend that they’ll now be able to have a beer together.

“Sorry, brother,” he told another.

Only a handful of staffers and supporters were aware of tonight’s announcement before Bush took the stage.

“This is a cycle that is bigger than all of us,” said Bush’s senior adviser, Sally Bradshaw, as she hugged her staff and Bush’s national finance chairman, Woody Johnson.

Winning. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a bullish victory speech Saturday evening after a commanding first place finish here in the South Carolina primary.

“Folks, let’s go, let’s have a big win in Nevada, let’s have a big night in the SEC, let’s put this thing away,” he told a cheering crowd packed into a ballroom at the Spartanburg Marriott.

Trump’s projected double-digit victory in the Palmetto State seemed another rebuff to critics who have voiced skepticism about his campaign’s ability to transform his organic support and enormous crowds into voters.

The real estate mogul’s win here now recasts the race, raising the stakes for establishment Republicans who believe his candidacy would torpedo the party’s chances to capture the White House in November. Trump dismissed political strategists who say that, as the field continues to narrow, one of his top-tier rivals will be able to consolidate votes against him in the Southern primaries.

“They don’t understand that as people drop out, I’m going to get a lot of those votes also,” he said.

The crowd broke into cheers throughout his remarks, chanting Trump’s name repeatedly as the candidate moved from topic to topic, hitting most of the main bullets in his stump speech.

His daughter, Ivanka, spoke on behalf of her family in congratulating her father on another primary victory, which follows a double-digit win in New Hampshire last week.

“The momentum since the beginning of this campaign has been unbelievable and that’s because my father’s message resonates so deeply,” she said.

The billionaire congratulated his rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) on their second and third place finishes. And he reminded his supporters that running for president is a grueling enterprise.

“It’s tough, it’s mean, it’s vicious, it’s beautiful,” he said. “When you win, it’s beautiful.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Saturday night that the Republican presidential race has narrowed to a contest between him, Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

“After tonight, this has become a three-person race and we will win,” said Rubio in a speech to supporters after Donald Trump claimed victory in the South Carolina primary.

In his remarks, Rubio praised former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who suspended his campaign tonight, for “running a campaign based on ideas.”

Rubio was slightly ahead of Cruz for second place when he took the stage.

Check out the number in the far right-hand column: with roughly 80 percent of the South Carolina primary returns in, as of right now Donald Trump stands to leave the state with 38 Republican more delegates tonight. Everyone else has picked up precisely the same number so far: 0.

Out. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

COLUMBIA, S.C. — As Jeb Bush announced that he was suspending his campaign, some of the staffers, donors and longtime friends at his election night party burst into tears.

“The presidency is bigger than any one person and it’s certainly bigger than any candidate,” he said.

Bush said he was proud of the campaign he had run, but “the people in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken….

“So tonight I am suspending my campaign,” he said.

“No!” someone shouted.

“Yeah,” he said before the room burst into applause.

With primary season in full swing, political news has begun to settle into some expected patterns. The assumption is that most of the big surprises that remain will come from voters, delegate counts and perhaps some unforeseeable candidate scandal.

To that end, there are plenty of stories that put Republican Donald Trump’s supporters on record as raucous, not ashamed to use their fists and spit and other not-so-nice things against their political opponents.

The most vehement supporters of Democratic Party contender Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) frequently come in for some reasonable comparisons, even if they insist that they are just too progressive for Trump supporter-style antics.

Well, something just happened in Las Vegas that might really and truly challenge that. Dolores Huerta, longtime civil rights and farm-labor activist as well as a confidant of the late Cesar Chavez, tweeted this Saturday night from a Nevada caucus location:

And unfortunately for Sanders’s supporters, there’s video that at the very least backs up Huerta’s claims that there was an awful lot of shouting and hissing while she was on stage at a Nevada caucus location. A caucus organizer had called for an interpreter willing to explain the process and latest updates to Spanish-speaking or Spanish-dominant caucusgoers.

The Washington Post’s Abby Phillip caught up with Huerta to find out what happened next.

“The person who was running the caucus … people were saying we need a translator, so he said the first person that comes to the stage can be the translator,” Huerta said. “So I went up to the front to be the translator.”

You can see in the video up above that wan’t so well received.

“It was mostly the organizers,” Huerta continued, “the Bernie organizers were shouting ‘no no no.’ Then a Bernie person stood up and said said no, we need to have it, I can also do translation or whatever. The person who ran the caucus said, well we won’t have a translator. The sad thing about this is that some of the organizers were shouting ‘English only! English only!’ The Bernie organizers.”

Full story here

Winning, again. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Donald Trump’s win in South Carolina is much, much bigger than his win in New Hampshire. We don’t yet know the margin by which Trump won — votes are still being counted — but we know it won’t match his 20-point victory in the Granite State. That doesn’t matter. What matters is how Trump won — and what it suggests about states further down the line.

Preliminary exit poll data from South Carolina suggested a Republican electorate that looked a lot more like Iowa than New Hampshire. In Iowa, Trump had a small lead going into the election, but was passed by a strong push from Ted Cruz that mobilized evangelical and conservative voters.

Those voter groups turned out heavily in South Carolina, too. More than seven in 10 South Carolina Republican primary voters told pollsters that they were born-again or evangelical Christians. Those results may shift through the night, we’ll note, but that figure is slightly higher than in 2012, when 65 percent of Republican primary voters identified themselves that way.

This should favor Cruz. In Iowa, Cruz won evangelicals by a 10-point margin. But this is where South Carolina was not like Iowa, since it appears that Trump has a slight lead with that group. That makes a huge difference.

An even higher percentage of the electorate — about 8 in 10 — identifies as “very” or “somewhat” conservative, up from 68 percent who said the same in 2012. Conservatives are another group that tends to favor Ted Cruz. But here too, Trump appears to have done better than in Iowa, winning a quarter of the “very conservative” vote to his one-fifth in Iowa.

About a fifth of the electorate identified as moderate, a group for which a number of candidates are vying. Here, Trump appears to have won a plurality of the vote, about 3 in 10. We noted this week that Trump appeared to have locked up the vote of those who would normally vote for the moderate/establishment candidate. Thanks in part to how that vote was split among competitors, it seems as though that was the story Saturday, too.

Full story here

Hillary Clinton’s win in Nevada was much more convincing than her victory in Iowa. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Hillary Clinton won the Iowa caucuses earlier this month. It just didn’t feel like it.

After holding a 30-point lead in the Hawkeye State in November, the favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination almost squandered her huge advantage. The race remained too close to call when many newspapers went to press on caucus night before it finally became clear that Clinton had pulled out a narrow victory, 49.8 percent to 49.6 percent, over Bernie Sanders.

Even then, news media often characterized the result as a virtual tie and a huge boost for Sanders, whose near-comeback seemed to validate him as a serious contender. Lest you think I’m exaggerating, I rounded up the headlines on the morning after.

[It’s about to get very real for Bernie Sanders]

Clinton’s win in Nevada on Saturday played completely differently in the press. News outlets (well, most of them) called the race pretty early, as the former secretary of state held a comfortable — if not commanding — lead of about five points with a majority of precincts reporting.

And journalists were much more generous with their praise than they had been in Iowa.

Full story here

Projected to win. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

COLUMBIA, S.C. —Donald Trump was projected to win the South Carolina primary on Saturday night, sustaining his position as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump prevailed after a rocky week on the campaign trail by tapping into the frustrations and anxieties of voters here with his red-hot rhetoric about combating terrorism and ending illegal immigration, brushing aside what appeared to be a condemnation from Pope Francis.

While exit polling made Trump’s victory apparent soon after polling places closed, the size of his victory will be closely watched as ballots are counted Saturday. The margins between Trump and the next two candidates — likely Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — could recast the race going into the “Super Tuesday” contests of March 1.

Full story here

Born-again Christians make up a large majority of South Carolina primary voters, and preliminary exit poll results show Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in a close race for their support. In Iowa, Cruz’s victory was fueled by a double-digit edge among evangelicals, while Trump held a wider lead among those who do not identify as born-again Christians.

Roughly 3 in 4 South Carolina Republican primary voters say they want a candidate who shares their religious beliefs, according to preliminary exit poll data. If it holds, that would mark a significant increase from the 2012 Republican primary (60 percent). The intensity is strong — about 4 in 10 say that it matters “a great deal” whether a candidate shares their religious beliefs, far more than the 26 percent who said it mattered a great deal in the 2012 South Carolina Republican primary.

And they’re in a tight race for voters who think that sharing religious beliefs matters. Cruz edges ahead among those who say religious beliefs matter “a great deal” — he holds a slight lead among these voters, while Trump leads among those who say sharing a candidate’s religious views only matters “somewhat.”

Full exit poll coverage here

It’s complicated. (Todd Bennett/The Augusta Chronicle via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

The key to winning the presidential nomination isn’t winning Iowa, or New Hampshire, or certainly the news cycle. It is winning delegates.

But how do primary and caucus outcomes translate into delegates?

Here’s how

Donald Trump (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

A first look at preliminary exit poll data from South Carolina suggests a Republican electorate that looks a lot more like Iowa than New Hampshire. With polls suggesting that Donald Trump’s lead may have been slipping shortly before Saturday and exit polls showing an electorate heavy on evangelicals and conservatives — core constituencies for Trump’s main rival, Ted Cruz — the race, as in Iowa, may be closer than we might have expected.

Over 7 in 10 South Carolina Republican primary voters told pollsters that they themselves born-again or evangelical Christians. Those results may shift through the night, we’ll note, but that would be slightly higher than in 2012 when 65 percent of Republican primary voters identified that way.

An even higher percentage of the electorate identifies as “very” or “somewhat” conservative — another group that tends to favor Ted Cruz.

About one-fifth of the electorate identified itself as moderate, a group for which a number of candidates are vying. It seems as though Marco Rubio’s late endorsement by Nikki Haley endorsement was not important for most voters. Roughly 7 in 10 Republican voters say the endorsement of Rubio was only a minor factor or was not factor at all in their primary vote.

More to come.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.

LAS VEGAS — Jeff Weaver, the campaign manager for Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, said he thinks Saturday’s result in Nevada showed “tremendous progress” for the Vermont senator, given how far behind he was Hillary Clinton in the polls just a few weeks ago.

Weaver also argued that entrance polls showing Sanders leading among Latino voters amounted to a major development in the race, even though Sanders didn’t prevail.

“That was supposed to be a huge part of the Clinton firewall,” Weaver said. “It’s a critical breakthrough in terms of the states that come next.”

Weaver said Sanders’s now-proven ability to court Latinos should help his prospects going forward in states including Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and California.

The loss in Nevada doesn’t impact Sanders’s plans to remain in the race through the Democratic convention, Weaver said.

He acknowledged that the campaign faces a tough test next week in the South Carolina primary, where Clinton has enjoyed a large lead in part on the strength of African American voters. But Weaver said Sanders has no plans to concede the first primary in the South to Clinton.

“We’re are certainly going to be down there to compete, but we’re going to have to appear in a host of other states as well,” he said, alluding to the 11 states that have primaries or caucuses just a few days later on March 1, the day known as Super Tuesday.

Weaver said Sanders can win several Super Tuesday states.

“We’re going to target the states where we’re strongest and compete for delegates everywhere,” Weaver said.

Bernie Sanders’s campaign released a statement Saturday in which the Vermont senator said he’d called Hillary Clinton to concede the Nevada race:

“I just spoke to Secretary Clinton and congratulated her on her victory here in Nevada. I am very proud of the campaign we ran. Five weeks ago we were 25 points behind and we ended up in a very close election. And we probably will leave Nevada with a solid share of the delegates.

“I am also proud of the fact that we have brought many working people and young people into the political process and believe that we have the wind at our back as we head toward Super Tuesday. I want to thank the people of Nevada for their support that they have given us and the boost that their support will give us as we go forward.”

Watch social video that shows cards being flipped to decide the contest between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in caucus precinct 307 in Carson City, Nev.

During the Iowa caucuses, Clinton won at least two precincts thanks to coin tosses.

Via Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill, tweeting in the wake of her projected victory in Nevada:

Donald Trump campaigning in North Charleston, S.C., on Feb. 19. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Super PACs and other independent groups have unleashed a torrent of spending in this year’s presidential contest, dumping more than $215 million into ads, mailers, robocalls and other efforts to persuade voters, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Guess how much has been spent explicitly attacking Republican front-runner Donald Trump?

About $9 million. Just around 4 percent.

The meager investment underscores the uncertainty in GOP establishment circles about how to take on the bombastic real estate developer/reality TV star, known for turning on his critics with vengeance. Many Republican donors have held back from supporting anti-Trump campaigns, worried that the attacks will further embolden him.

The biggest anti-Trump spender to date has been Our Principles PAC, a super PAC launched in mid-January by Republican strategist Katie Packer. So far, it has reported spending $3.8 million on ads that showcase the contradictory positions he has taken over the years.

It remains to be seen whether the spots will undercut his appeal.

Full story

Actor Will Ferrell was long featured on a list of artists backing Bernie Sanders. Today, he showed up in a last-minute campaign video, urging Nevada voters to go out and caucus in the closing hours of the race.

For Hillary Clinton.

(And yes: his name no longer appears on the Artists for Bernie list)

The projected winner. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

LAS VEGAS — Hillary Clinton held off a powerful late challenge from rival Sen. Bernie Sanders in Nevada’s Democratic caucus vote Saturday, securing what is projected to be a narrow victory that could help Clinton renew a claim to the mantle of presumptive Democratic nominee.

With more two-thirds of precincts reporting, Clinton held a four-point lead over Sanders — a margin more decisive than her razor-thin Iowa win but much closer than the Clinton campaign had anticipated as recently as a month ago, when they touted polling showing the former Secretary of State with a 25-point lead.

Full story

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are locked in a contest that looks like it will go down to the wire in Nevada.

With 42 percent of the results reporting, Clinton was leading a small but steady lead over Sanders, 51.5 to 48.4 percent, according to the Associated Press. But important parts of the state had still not reported their totals, and observers predicted a tight fight to the finish.

The Clinton camp once saw Nevada as part of a kind of firewall in which non-white voters would help bolster them against Sanders’s insurgent candidacy. After telling supporters in a conference call a month ago that Clinton was leading in Nevada by 25 points, the campaign has been trying to aggressively tamp down expectations.

Clinton partisans recently argued that the state contained 80 percent white voters, a line of argument on which they did some backtracking. Sanders has gone all-out in the state, and has said that younger and working-class Latino voters swung in support of his candidacy in recent weeks.

Preliminary entrance polls show that 7 of 10 voters identify themselves as liberal and massive turnout from Democrats who haven’t previously voted in a caucus.

Watch Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stop by Harrah’s in Las Vegas, where she is seeking support from casino workers ahead of Saturday’s caucus in Nevada.

SOCIAL STUDIES | A taste of Trump’s Twitter feed on South Carolina primary day:

More findings from preliminary entrance polls in Nevada show caucus-goers extremely divided on whether to continue President Obama’s policies or to go even further in terms of pursuing a liberal agenda.

Here are the latest key findings:

• Obama legacy divides Democrats: Hillary Clinton has sought to distinguish herself as a strong supporter of President Obama’s policies, while Bernie Sanders has emphasized areas where he would push a more liberal agenda, according to preliminary entrance polls reported by CNN. Roughly half of Nevada caucus-goers say the next president should continue Obama’s policies, while about 4 in 10 want a president who will pursue more liberal policies. Clinton leads by a nearly 3 to 1 margin among those who want to continue Obama’s agenda, while Sanders holds a similar edge among those who prefer more liberal policies. Obama’s legacy was a similarly sharp dividing line in both Iowa and New Hampshire, with Clinton winning over 60 percent among voters who want to continue Obama’s policies, and Sanders garnering an even larger majority among those who want a “more liberal” approach.
• Nevada sees massive influx of new caucus-goers: Preliminary entrance polls reported by CNN show over 6 in 10 Nevada caucus-goers say this is their first rodeo, far higher than the share of first-time caucusers in Iowa (44 percent).  The large number of first-time caucus-goers bodes well for Bernie Sanders, who leads Clinton by double digits among this group. Clinton holds an even wider margin among Democrats who have attended caucuses before, though they make up just over one-third of the electorate.
• Massive generational gap continues: Age has been the sharpest dividing line among Democratic voters so far this year, and preliminary entrance poll results reported by CNN show that trend continuing. Sanders is supported by roughly three-quarters Democratic caucus-goers under age 45, while Clinton leads with about 6 in 10 support among those who are older. 

SOCIAL STUDIES | The two actresses are the latest pop-culture figures to urge support for Clinton (see the rest here):

SOCIAL STUDIES | The Sanders campaign released a series of multi-lingual posters Thursday in advance of the Nevada caucus.

On the campaign website, versions are available in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese — and of course, English:

Only in Nevada could a card game decide a political race. But that’s exactly what might happen in caucus locations where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders finish with equal support.

In line with Nevada’s history as a gambling state, the state Democratic party announced on Friday that ties will be broken by a simple game of chance: high-card draw.

“In the rare circumstances where two or more presidential preference groups are tied for the loss or gain of a precinct-level delegate and have the same lowest or highest decimal, groups must draw a single card from a deck of cards to break the tie. High card determines winner,” the party stated in a question-and-answer document.

It remains to be seen whether this method will be used in Saturday’s caucus. But it’s worth noting that the same procedure was in place in 2008, when Clinton won the caucus over then-Sen. Barack Obama.

“If there is a tie at any point during the caucus the tie will be broken by a draw of cards using the deck of cards provided,” a set of 2008 caucus guidelines stated.

“The game of chance will be a game of high card draw with the Ace being high and suit does not matter. If the same card is drawn those in the tie breaker will redraw cards until there is a winner. Cards will be shuffled before drawling [sic] and all wild cards will be removed.”

Preliminary Nevada caucus entrance polls conducted by NBC News and CNN are trickling out.

The most striking finding is that roughly 7 in 10 Nevada Democrats identify as liberals according to preliminary entrance poll results reported by CNN; if that holds, it would mark a significant uptick from 45 percent in 2008 who identified as liberal. The apparent surge in liberal voters bodes well for Bernie Sanders, who has drawn disproportionate support from strong liberals in the past.

As our colleague Phillip Bump notes:

About a third identify as “very liberal” — nearly twice the number that did so in 2008. That year, 41 percent of caucus-goers identified themselves as moderates, substantially more than have in the early data this year. As we’ve noted previously, this is probably in part a function of Democrats’ increased willingness to identify as liberals …

It’s also a group with whom Bernie Sanders does particularly well. He gets nearly 6-in-10 votes from very liberal voters while Hillary Clinton gets the same proportion of those who identify as moderates. About half of those who came out to caucus want a president who will continue the policies of Barack Obama — but 4-in-10 want someone who will be more liberal still.

Other key early findings:

• No agreement on most important quality in a president: Nevada Democrats are split into four camps on what personal quality was most important in deciding their support. Preliminary entrance poll results reported by CNN find roughly 1 in 4 Democrats prioritize a candidate who is “honest and trustworthy” while a similar number want someone who “cares about people like me.” Sanders dominated among both of these groups in Iowa and New Hampshire contests. But another 1 in 4 Democrats want “the right experience” in a candidate, and another 1 in 5 prefer someone who is most electable in November, both groups who have heavily favored Clinton in the past.
• Nevada’s electorate matches past racial diversity: After facing 90-percent white electorates in Iowa and New Hampshire Democratic voters, preliminary entrance polling reported by CNN finds roughly just about two-thirds of voters are white while African Americans make up roughly 1 in 10 caucus-goers and roughly 1 in 5 are Hispanic. Those figures mostly in line with Nevada’s caucus eight years ago, when 65 percent of caucus-goers were white and 15 percent apiece were African American and Hispanic.

The Wynn Las Vegas hotel and casino. (AP Photo/John Locher)

LAS VEGAS — The combined precinct at the Wynn Las Vegas could have been a mob scene, with workers from this hotel, Wynn’s Encore resort, Circus Circus, the Westgate, and the towering Trump building packed into one conference room. In 2008, 376 voters crowded the precinct, breaking for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama by just two votes.

This year was another, calmer story. Just 60 voters made it to the precinct. In an initial count, 35 broke for Clinton, 23 for Sanders, and two were uncommitted.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), a Clinton surrogate who had been drumming up votes in union dining halls, was sure that voters were kept from the precinct by unforgiving schedules. “There was a bunch of people who wanted to vote, and they said they’d lose an hour’s wages if they did,” he said, leaving the precinct. “There’s a poll tax in Nevada.”

Yet if the vote held, the fallen turnout would make no impact on the overall delegate count — and would help Clinton net more delegates than she did in the close 2008 caucus.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Sunglasses and all:

Bernie Sanders, left, and Donald Trump. (EPA, Getty Images)

Much of the focus today is on Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the outsider candidates whose presence in the field upended the presidential primaries. Trump is expected to win in South Carolina, where he’s leading in the polls, and Sanders and Hillary Clinton are battling for control in Nevada.

Both Trump and Sanders are riding the wave of voter frustration, as our colleagues Dan Balz, Abby Phillip and Jose DelReal report:

As the leading outsiders in the presidential race, Trump and Sanders continue to underscore the frustrations with politics as usual on both the left and right. Trump has tapped anti-immigration sentiment in particular and has drawn energy from working-class white voters. ­Sanders has energized younger voters as part of a grass-roots constituency that has given his candidacy surprising strength.

“There is a shift in the establishment and thinking of Republicans in South Carolina from mainstream, center-right Republicans to angry, hard-right Republicans,” said Kaeton Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman who is not aligned with any candidate. “It’s a monumental shift against the pillars of our society: our government and our elected officials” …

The tone of the South Carolina campaign has been overwhelmingly negative, and not only because of the millions of dollars in attack ads that flooded television stations in the final week. The candidates themselves have carried on an acrid dialogue in which the words “liar” and “lying” have been injected into campaign rhetoric at a volume rarely seen even in a state known for brutal intra­party contests.

Volunteers unroll an American flag at a location prior to an event with Hillary Clinton during a campaign rally at the Laborers International Union in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

More than 31,000 Nevada voters pre-registered online to speed up the process at their caucus locations today, the Nevada Democratic party announced.

The figure could point to higher-than-expected turnout in a state where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are battling for control. The Democrats’ online Caucus Express is a three-step form that allows voters to use an express check-in line at their caucus locations.

“The Nevada State Democratic Party has worked diligently this cycle to make the caucus process as easy, simple and accessible as possible for voters to participate in this important process,” Cory Warfield, Nevada State Democratic Party Presidential Caucus Director, said in a statement.

“Building on our successful competitive caucus in 2008, Caucus Express is helping us improve the caucus process in 2016 by streamlining our communication with tens of thousands of attendees and speeding up today’s check-in process.”

About 117,600 Democrats turned out for the Nevada caucus in 2008. Clinton won that primary contest over then-Sen. Barack Obama.

In a heated primary caucus, even shirt color can cause controversy.

That’s the case today in Nevada, where supporters of Bernie Sanders are accusing supporters of Hillary Clinton of donning pink shirts in order to impersonate members of National Nurses United, which endorsed Sanders.

Here’s the story, which is unfolding in caucus locations and on Twitter.

Members of the nurses union are wearing red shirts today to signify their support for Sanders. Check out two versions of the red shirt below on NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro (left) and NNU President Deborah Burger (right):

Here are a couple more shots:

The trouble started Saturday when NNU members spotted Clinton volunteers changing into bright pink shirts. Their conclusion — which has not been proven — is that the Clinton team intends to deceive caucus-goers by wearing tees that look the same as NNU’s.

Here are shots of those pink Clinton shirts:

LAS VEGAS — Former president Bill Clinton made a brief appearance at a caucus site at Caesars Palace just as participants were starting to check in.

“We’ve done everything we can. We’ve got a good response,” said the former president, who’s been a leading surrogate for his wife, Hillary Clinton.

Among the early arrivals, Clinton appeared to have more supporters, based on those wearing t-shirts advertising their preferred candidate and carrying signs.

GREENVILLE, S.C.– Stephanie Thorn went into a small room at the West End Community Center to cast her ballot for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) while her husband waited outside with their young son. She said she likes Rubio’s conservative values and believes he’s the candidate best suited to carry the GOP to victory in November.

“I think he has just a really good chance of winning because he’s very well liked, especially with the Hispanic community,” Thorn, 30, said. “I think he would be able to beat Hillary or Bernie, as opposed to Cruz who is too divisive and Trump who is too divisive. He just seems like a really good guy.”

Her husband, Coben, 30 also voted Saturday but cast his vote for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“I thought he had the best chance to beat Trump in this state. I’m not as socially conservative as he is but I like his tax plan,” he said.

They were just two of twenty-something voters that voted at the site in the first 90 minutes after the location opened. Asked why they made the early trek on an overcast Saturday morning, they pointed down at their son. “We’ve got Dan and he’s been up for a little while,” Stephanie said smiling.

They both also cited Donald Trump’s dominance in the election thus far as reasons for casting their ballots for Rubio and Cruz.

“I get why people like him — he says how things are a lot of times but I feel like he’s too much of a loose cannon,” Stephanie said. “I feel like if you put nuclear codes in a guy’s hands like that and he was having a bad day, or — I don’t know, I feel like he could mess up relations with a lot of people.”

That’s the question supporters are asking ahead of tonight’s results in South Carolina. If Bush doesn’t fare well — and he’s not expected to — will he leave the race Saturday night?

There were signs Friday night that staffers feel the end is near, according to our colleague Ed O’Keefe:

His final South Carolina campaign event [in Central, S.C.] felt bittersweet on Friday night. Staffers and volunteers hugged warmly, realizing that they had just one more day to convince Republicans to pick their guy. The hugs came as aides strongly denied reports that staffers are shopping their resumes in anticipation of the campaign’s conclusion …

Polls suggest that Jeb Bush is getting farther from his chance to make presidential history. Donald Trump maintains a wide lead over the field, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in second place. Mired in the middle, Bush is tied with or trailing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and barely keeping ahead of Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

John Kasich’s chief of staff  believes Bush will drop out after South Carolina. As our colleague Phil Rucker reports:

Kasich’s chief strategist, John Weaver, predicted Saturday morning that Bush’s campaign would end with the day’s South Carolina primary — and he credited the Ohio governor with helping drive the former Florida governor and political scion from the race.

“For all practical purposes, there’s no path forward for Governor Bush,” Weaver said in a strategy briefing with reporters. “There’s no state post-South Carolina where he’s not either last or close to last” …

Weaver’s argument to reporters is that there will be four tickets out of South Carolina into the many states holding March contests — and that Kasich will edge Bush for the fourth one. Buoyed by his strong second-place finish in New Hampshire, Weaver said, Kasich is hiring more staff, opening more offices and targeting March states like Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Vermont and Virginia.

LAS VEGAS — Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders made a morning visit to the MGM Grand Casino, where scores of workers were waiting to greet him and take selfies in advance of the Nevada caucuses.

“If there’s a large turnout, I think we’re going to do just fine,” the Vermont senator told a swarm of reporters who trailed him around a large employee dining area. “If not, it could be a different story.”

Sanders and his entourage in many cases were trying to make sure the unionized workers planned to participate in the caucuses, scheduled to begin later in the morning. The Sanders team handed out literature and answered questions about what time people needed to show up.

Among those already sold on Sanders was Laura Barrera-Perez, who said her job was cleaning the casino.

“He proposes good stuff,” she said of Sanders. “I saw his face, and he’s very honest.”

Ambrocio Leyva, a buffet line server, said he was still struggling with choice but was inclined to go with Sanders over Hillary Clinton. Leyva, 46, who came to the United States from Mexico 25 years ago, said he liked Sanders’s plans on immigration.

“I like how he’s trying to do good things for the people,” Leyva said.

He said that many of his co-workers had initially been for Clinton but some were rethinking their choices.

Leyva said he had waited to make a final choice until the end because “you can always hear something new” from the candidates. “I’m making that decision now,” he said.

LAS VEGAS — As Sen. Bernie Sanders made a final pre-caucus swing through the MGM Grand casino, his highest-profile Latino endorsers took one last chance to attack Hillary Clinton’s immigration record, telling reporters on a conference call that her “hypocrisy” was breaking down her “whole mythology of a firewall of color.”

“There was a comfort zone that the Clinton campaign and their operatives were working in, that there would be no real response from the Latino community,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the first member of Congress to endorse Sanders.

“Now that you’ve opened up the can, let’s talk about the 1996 immigration bill. Let’s talk about the vote on the fence. Let’s talk about licenses for DREAMers. Let’s talk about a three- and 10-year bars that effectively split families.”

Grijalva has campaigned extensively through Nevada, making that argument about a 1996 immigration bill passed by a new Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton.

On the call there was evident frustration that it had not broken through, and that Clinton had kept battering Sanders over his vote against the 2007 immigration bill — a vote, they noted, that put him on the same side as Barack Obama.

“I respect Rep. Xavier Beccera and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, but they should know better,” said Gil Cedillo, a Los Angeles city councilman, referring to two Clinton surrogates. “They voted with Bernie Sanders in 2007 against these provisions. This is not a place where they’re going to gain points.”

Alfredo Gutierrez, a former leader of the Arizona Senate, got more personal. He asked how Clinton could possibly run an ad – “Brave” – in which she cradled the young daughter of immigrants and assuaged her worries about deportation.

“Is this the same Hillary Clinton who advocated the imprisonment and deportation of minors to war-torn Central American countries?” asked Gutierrez.

He went further, attacking Clinton for “trotting out” the endorsement of legendary California labor organizer Dolores Huerta. “She was advocating for deportations in the 1960s,” said Gutierrez. “She supported employer sanctions. Now she says she’s had a conversion, and I do believe in redemption, but I will add she was one of the voices asking President Obama to delay the implementation of DACA.”

Nevada’s caucuses mark the first real chance for non-white voters to weigh in on the Democratic race. The next will come in South Carolina, and in the Southern-heavy line-up of states that vote on March 1. Sanders’s campaign has already targeted Colorado, a caucus state with a large Latino population, as one of its best Super Tuesday hopes.