Donald Trump emphatically scored his third consecutive victory in an early-voting state, winning the Nevada caucuses on Tuesday night to further strengthen his position in the Republican presidential race heading to the Super Tuesday elections in 15 states on March 1.
According to the Associated Press, with 100 percent of the precincts reporting, Trump won 45.9 percent of the votes in Nevada, good for 12 delegates. Sen. Marco Rubio was at second place with 23.9 percent (five delegates), Sen. Ted Cruz at third place with 21.4 percent (five delegates), Dr. Ben Carson at fourth with 4.8 percent (zero delegate), and Gov. John Kasich at fifth place with 3.6 percent (zero delegate).
So far, Trump has amassed 79 delegates while Cruz had 16, Rubio 15, Kasich, five and Carson, three. To clinch the Republican nomination, a candidate needs at least 1,237 delegates. In the remaining electoral contests, 2,347 delegates are still available, according to AP.
In a stunning show of momentum for his campaign, Trump swept almost every category of the electorate to build his dominance in the delegate count, CNN reported.
"We love Nevada," Trump said during his brief victory speech at his party in Las Vegas late Tuesday night. "We will be celebrating for a long time tonight."
"We weren't expected to win too much and now we're winning, winning, winning the country," Trump said. "And soon the country is going to start winning, winning, winning."
Trump pointed out his victory in all demographics. "We won the evangelicals," he said. "We won with young. With won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated."
Surprisingly, entrance polls showed that Trump won the Hispanic votes even though he has campaigned on a hard-line immigration platform, including building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The entrance polls indicated Hispanic voters made up 8 percent of the GOP electorate and 45 percent of them said they would be voting for Trump.
Trump pointed this out in his victory speech: "Number one with Hispanics... I'm really happy about that," he said.
Trump's resounding victory was made possible by majority of the caucusgoers who said they wanted a president from outside the political establishment. Some six in 10 caucusgoers said they were angry about the way the government is functioning, CNN reported.
Trump's success in Nevada may increase the pressure on his opponents to somehow join forces against a common enemy, the New York Times reported.
Cruz and Rubio have been bashing each other in recent days in an effort to establish themselves as Trump's strongest rival.
While Cruz has intensified his hawkish comments on immigration to compete with Trump, Rubio has sought to unite Republican leaders behind his bid, casting himself as the only candidate capable both of defeating Trump and winning a difficult general election race.
A host of senators and members of Congress and a few governors have thrown their support to Rubio in recent days.
