Dem with most donors in Vegas may be a good bet

What to know about the Democratic caucuses

We already know the votes of hundreds of residents in Nevada.

Nevada’s Democratic presidential caucus is Saturday, but throughout 2019, more Las Vegas residents put their money on Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden than other Democratic hopefuls. President Donald Trump had the most donors of all candidates in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas will likely have a big say in Nevada’s results Saturday. Nearly a third of the state’s residents – and much of Clark County’s population – live there. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Clark County by 10 percentage points in the general election, helping her to a 2 percentage point win in Nevada.

USA TODAY teamed with RentHop, an algorithm-driven apartment search service, to drill down to the neighborhood level in 20 geographically diverse, large cities to see which candidates had the most donors. The results mirror much of the red state/blue state divide and represent the contributions of a combined population of nearly 30 million people.

WASHINGTON – Now that New Hampshire and Iowa are behind the candidates, the 2020 Democratic contenders focus on the next state: Nevada.

The caucuses will be held Saturday. For the first time, Democrats in the state have been able to participate through early voting, which has already turned out thousands of voters.

Same-day registration is also allowed.

How does voting work?

Caucuses are a party-run, community-based approach to nominating a presidential candidate.

In a caucus, you vote with your feet, teaming up with like-minded residents at your nearest voting location – known as a precinct – to show support for a presidential candidate.

Voters will fill out a form, called a presidential preference card, that lists the top candidates they support.

That’s just the first ballot, or “alignment” in caucus-speak. The real fun starts in the second alignment when supporters of less-popular candidates are encouraged to join groups of caucusgoers who backed a better-liked contender.

Viability, the percentage of supporters a candidate claims at a voting location, can vary widely but will typically require the support of at least 15% of caucusgoers per precinct.

The Silver State’s system of settling caucus ties is to draw from a deck of cards.

Precinct check-ins start at 10 a.m. Saturday at 57 voting locations scattered throughout Washoe County. Caucusing begins at noon. Precinct locations can be found at caucus.nvdems.com or by contacting the party at 702-737-8683.

Will Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden take the top two spots in Nevada’s Democratic caucus on Saturday?

USA TODAY teamed with RentHop, an algorithm-driven apartment search service, to drill down to the neighborhood level in 20 geographically diverse, large cities to see which candidates had the most donors during all of 2019.

Sanders (461) and Biden (367) led the Democrats for unique donors in Las Vegas, whose residents represent a large portion of Nevada’s population. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg finished a distant third with 210 donors.

In addition to the 20 large cities, RentHop collected the 2019 donor data for Des Moines to see if the number of donor contributions might align with the outcome of the Iowa caucuses. The contributions and results were very close.

Buttigieg had just two more donors in Des Moines than Sanders. The Iowa caucus margin was equally close. Buttigieg finished with 26.2% (564 state delegate equivalents), beating Sanders by a 10th of a percent (562 SDEs).

Clearly, there are many asterisks associated with such an analysis – not the least of which are the results of the firstalignment vote (Sanders won handily), and size and demographics of Des Moines relative to Iowa.

As for Las Vegas, all of these contributions were made in 2019 – long before Iowa and New Hampshire voted – so those results could weigh on caucusgoers’ decisions this weekend.

Polling since the Iowa caucuses suggests that Buttigieg and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg have been the beneficiaries of Biden’s poor showing in the first two contests, according to Real Clear Politics. Bloomberg is not on the Nevada ballot.