Nevada Primary: Joe Biden Seeks To Shore Up Support After Big Win in South Carolina

United States President Joe Biden is seeking to shore up support from voters in the Nevada primary following his big win in South Carolina.

This comes as the first-in-the-West primaries are currently underway in Nevada with early and absentee voting. The last time that the Democratic president last visited the state was in December when he highlighted more than $8 billion in federal funding for passenger rail projects nationwide.

Joe Biden Sets Eyes on Nevada Primary

(Photo : Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
United States President Joe Biden is setting his eyes on the Nevada primary to shore up support from voters after cruising to victory in South Carolina.

Biden on Sunday planned to rally voters in the region's majority-Black Historic Westside and also attend a campaign fundraiser. A spokesperson for the president's re-election campaign, Michael Tyler, said that the Democrat will encourage his supporters to vote in Tuesday's primary to help build momentum for the fall.

During the primary, Biden faces only token opposition from author Marianne Williamson and a few relatively unknown presidential hopefuls. In November 2020, the president won Nevada by fewer than three percentage points.

The state is known largely for its casino and hospitality industries and is synonymous with split-ticket, hard-to-predict results. It also has a transient, working-class population and large Latino, Filipino, and Chinese American and Black communities, as per the Associated Press.

The region also has a stark rural-urban divide, which has more than 88% of active registered voters in the two most populous counties, including the Las Vegas and Reno metro areas. Two years ago, Democrats were able to successfully defend their Senate seat and lost the governor's office.

Now, the six constitutional officers elected statewide are split evenly among the Democratic and Republican parties. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto's narrow victory helped the left-wing party keep control of the Senate for the remainder of the president's current term.

This year, a vast Democratic operation was built by the late Sen. Harry Reid is working in Biden's favor. Known as the "Reid Machine," it trained operatives and retained organizers for years and it is partially the reason that despite Nevada's status as a purple state, Democrats have won every presidential election in the state since 2008.

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Biden is expected to host at least two campaign events in the arid Western state, which has a population of roughly 3 million. The president also plans to visit the historic Westside, which is an area located northwest of the Las Vegas casino "strip." This is an area where Black Americans founded their own casinos and clubs roughly a century ago, according to Reuters.

The latest figures revealed that the state of Nevada has roughly 705,000 registered Democrats, 646,000 registered Republicans, and nearly 768,000 who are considered "non-partisan." During the Tuesday primary, Democratic and Republican voters also have the option of voting for "none of these candidates."

The situation comes as Biden recently won the South Carolina primary, easily beating out presidential hopefuls Rep. Dean Phillips and Williamson. This victory brings the president's campaign one step closer to the general election.

The election this November is expected to be one of the longest and most expensive in the political history of the United States. The Republican presidential primary in South Carolina is scheduled to be held on Feb. 24, said Politico.