LAS VEGAS — On paper at least, President Joe Biden was the big winner in last week's elections.
As of Monday, Biden earned 116,964 votes in Tuesday's primary election, by far the biggest vote-getter of the election. That represented 89% of all votes cast in the Democratic primary.
Biden's closest competitor? The non-human "None of These Candidates" ballot option, which garnered 5.5% of the vote. "None" actually beat former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, 63% to 31%.
On Thursday, former President Donald Trump — the man Biden will likely face in November in the general election — won the Republican caucus with 59,984 votes. That represented 99.1% of all votes cast in that contest.
The Nevada Republican Party decided to boycott the state primary in favor of a caucus, which party officials said was more secure. The party prohibited anyone who filed in the state-run primary (candidates such as Haley) from participating in the caucus. As a result of that rule and other contenders giving up their campaigns, Trump was virtually unopposed on the caucus ballot.
But anyone looking for messages in the numbers — Biden earning nearly twice as many votes as Trump — is sure to be disappointed. There's simply no comparison between the two contests.
Voters in the primary had the option to mail in their ballots, or participate in a week of early voting. They could vote anywhere in Clark County, regardless of where they live. They could even register to vote or change parties at the polls. And on Election Day, voting went on for 12 hours, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Turnout in the primary reached about 18% of all active registered voters.
By contrast, there were no mail ballots or early voting in the caucus. Voters had to report to a particular precinct site on a specific day, and polls were open for just 2-1/2 hours. Officials checked voter registration and ID at the doors — participants had to have been registered Republicans for at least 30 days to be eligible to cast a ballot.
All told, only 10.8% of eligible Republicans turned out to participate in the caucus.
If the Republican Party had decided not to hold a caucus and participate in the primary, Trump would definitely have earned more than the 60,000 votes he got in the caucus, even if he would have been facing Haley and "None of These Candidates" on the ballot. (To be sure, "None" was undoubtedly boosted by Republicans who voted in the primary to thwart Haley and then turned out later in the week to caucus for Trump.)
The fact that Trump was not on the primary ballot — and that Trump himself encouraged his supporters to boycott the primary and turn out instead for the caucus — also helps explain why more than 54,000 more Democrats voted in the primary than did Republicans.
How can we be sure? Because the last time Trump and Biden went head-to-head in Nevada, the race was far closer than last week's primary and caucus results suggest.
In 2020, Biden won 50.1% of the vote, or 703,486 actual ballots. Trump won 47.7%, or 669,890. That was a difference of just 2.39 percentage points, or 33,596 actual votes, out of 1.4 million cast.
Those results were not that different from 2016, when Hillary Clinton beat Trump 48% to 45.5%, a difference of 27,202 votes out of 1.1 million cast.
Republicans said they decided to use a caucus to award their party's delegates to the state and national convention because of election security concerns. Critics of the plan maintained it was to ensure that Trump won overwhelmingly, which he did. Yet another feature of the decision is the fact that it's impossible to compare Biden's performance in the presidential preference primary to Trump's in the caucus.
For that comparison, we'll have to wait until November.
