Democratic primary: Joe Biden bets on Nevada to get better health

Text by: RFI Follow

The Nevada Caucuses are being held this Saturday evening. It is a sparsely populated state, but it is a milestone in the race for the White House where the population is more diverse than in Iowa and New Hampshire. Joe Biden, the polls favorite, was relegated to 4th and 5th position.

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With our special correspondent in Las Vegas, Éric de Salve

Despite his setbacks in previous caucuses, Joe Biden supporters still want to believe it. " We are still in the race, " an African-American supporter explained to us on RFI on Friday.

Of course, we would have liked to have done better in these first two states, but we haven't lost our shirt so far, we are still in the race.

Biden supporters still believe

Supporters of Joe Biden try to persuade themselves that the poor results recorded during the first two rounds of the primary are explained by a vote too white in Iowa and New Hampshire. But in Nevada, they say, it's different, because it is more representative of American diversity.

Nevada is 29% Hispanic and 10% Black. However, 99% of blacks, the foundation of the Democratic Party, have not yet voted, repeats loop Joe Biden. The 77-year-old former vice president therefore wants to believe that the African-American vote will save him from the rout, especially since he makes Obama's nostalgia his main campaign argument.

For the past week, from Reno to Las Vegas, he has been hitting on this black Nevada community, campaigning in its churches, its restaurants, plowing its neighborhoods until the eve of the vote. But in reality, this fight, he no longer really hopes to win, and aims at best a second place, because the one who dominates widely in all the polls in Nevada, it is still Bernie Sanders . The senator from Vermont is also at the top of the voting intentions for blacks and Hispanics.

There is a large majority of Latinos who have voted for the Democrats in recent years, really considering the Republican Party as the party to be wary of: the enemy party, the anti-immigrant party, the anti-social party ...

James Cohen, professor at Paris 3 University, Sorbonne-Nouvelle

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• United States
• USA elections 2020

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