A look back at Nevada's primaries and caucus.

President Joe Biden won the Democratic primary with more than 89% of the vote, while the "None of These Candidates" option beat former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the Republican primary.

Not on the Republican primary ballot in Nevada was former President Donald Trump, and that's because the state GOP decided to hold a caucus and only award delegates based on its results.

Trump won the caucus with more than 99% of the vote and gained 26 delegates.

And here to explain what impact his victory has had is Jacob Solis, Politics Reporter for The Nevada Independent.

Jacob, welcome.

Nevada is a swing state.

It is the third state on the Republicans' Presidential nominating calendar, and early voting states can sometimes influence the trajectory of a candidate.

So did Nevada have any kind of influence?

(Jacob Solis) I'll say probably not.

And a lot of that goes down to, I think, what you've already outlined, which is the confusion between having a primary and having a caucus, in the first place.

That was a decision that the state Party, the state GOP, made pretty early last year after Ron DeSantis, the Governor of Florida, jumped in, jumped into the race.

Donald Trump's campaign started courting the state GOP.

Many of the members of the top leadership of the state GOP have been very close with the Trump campaign for a long time, and that's how we sort of got this dual caucus-primary setup in the first place.

-And how did that benefit Trump?

-Well, really, there was no competition for Trump.

When the Party rules were made last summer, what they did crucially to sort of block out DeSantis was they prevented Super PACs from participating in the caucus process.

And DeSantis at the time was basically running his campaign through a Super PAC.

And so it's easy, sort of, to connect the dots there.

And certainly his Super PAC was-- they called it rigged at the time, and they sort of stopped campaigning in Nevada.

Every other campaign, folks like Mike Pence, the former Vice President; Tim Scott, the South Carolina Senator; and Nikki Haley, just sort of avoided Nevada.

They didn't spend any money here.

They didn't come and campaign here because they didn't see an opportunity to actually win delegates like they might in New Hampshire or Iowa, which were the first two states on the calendar for Republicans.

And so by the time we actually got to Nevada, I mean, basically everyone but Nikki Haley had dropped out.

There was no one left on the caucus ballot.

There were six candidates initially.

All but Trump and Texas Pastor and CEO Ryan Binkley had dropped out.

And so it was basically Trump's show.

And so it was we got what we got.

-Nevada's Republican voters, at least those that The Nevada Independent spoke with, those that showed up to the primary, how well aware were they that Donald Trump would not be on the ballot and that they were supposed to really be going to the caucus?

-It was a mixed bag.

There were folks who showed up who were Republicans who showed up on primary day to go vote for Trump and were surprised when they didn't see him on the ballot, because they-- everyone gets mail ballot, right?

If you're a registered Republican or Democrat, there's about 1.1 million voters who got a ballot in the mail.

A lot of Republicans got that ballot, didn't see Trump's name on a list of like seven candidates, and said, What gives?

So they go to the polling place and learn, Oh, there's a caucus in two days.

I guess I'll go to that too.

And so voters we talked to were (A) surprised and (B) confused and (C) upset.

And so they they ended up going to the caucus two days later.

-All right.

So that's from the state perspective.

What about from a national perspective?

What is Nevada's reputation now, or credibility, as a result of this dual primary-caucus system?

-I think it's an open question, right, because Nikki Haley is essentially the only credible candidate left against Trump in this sort of primary process.

South Carolina at this point is maybe still a little ways away, and Haley is doing badly in the polls there, sort of losing 2 to 1 to Trump so far in those early polls.

Nevada, had she attempted to do anything here, could have been a sort of like little mini Bulwark.

I don't think she would have won, to be clear.

"None of These Candidates" still won in Nevada on the primary ballot that Trump wasn't on, which is essentially a protest vote for Trump.

-So even if she had made an effort, you don't think she would have won?

-No, I don't think so.

But she could have at least done better than-- I think a lot of the headlines the day after were that her campaign was embarrassed, that it was, you know, she was crushed, and like all this stuff.

And the narrative setting becomes key, because now, you know, after she does badly in Nevada, Trump becomes even more of the de facto candidate for the rest of the race.

And so at that national level, I mean, there's essentially no competition.

So Nikki Haley intentionally avoided Nevada, but it certainly didn't help her.

-Up next for her and Donald Trump is the South Carolina primary on February 24.

It is her home state.

Do you consider this a must-win for her?

-Yeah, absolutely.

I think the theory of the case for Nikki Haley is that she can-- if she can beat Trump, she has to do well in South Carolina and then she has to do well on Super Tuesday.

Right now, neither of those outcomes look likely or possible.

Trump is polling, again, sort of 2 to 1 against her.

The Party is starting to consolidate around Trump, and I think a lot of Republicans-- and the way that, sort of, Democrats have said, We want Joe Biden as our nominee, a lot of Republicans have said, We want Donald Trump as our nominee.

The people who are most plugged in, who are most likely to come out in these low turnout primary elections are people who are activated and want to vote for Donald Trump.

-I'm glad you brought up the turnout.

Because back here in Nevada, how was the turnout in these primaries, primaries that haven't happened in this state for several decades?

-Yeah.

I think it depends on how you contextualize the numbers.

Right?

So on the one hand, Nevada has had a caucus.

Like you said, we haven't had primaries in a long time.

And those caucuses are generally lower turnout.

So these primary elections broke the caucus turnout records.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans had higher turnout this year than those record caucuses.

That said, only about 15% of all the mail ballots that got sent out to Democrats and Republicans, again about 1.1 million people, were returned.

So in that context, very low turnout.

So it's really just sort of a function of like, this was great turnout compared to past years, but terrible, sort of like in general terms.

-But the mail ballots did contribute to the turnout?

-Oh, absolutely.

Because again, it's sort of if you're a voter who is sort of high information, you're plugged in, you want to vote, mail ballots make it that much easier to say, Okay, well, I just want to vote for Joe Biden or I want to vote for Donald Trump or None of These Candidates to show that my guy has my support.

So I'm going to mail it in and I'm done.

I don't have to go on Election Day.

What we saw was voters did not come out on Election Day.

Weather was bad sort of statewide.

Snowing up north.

It was kind of miserable down south.

But even with that, I mean, everyone just kind of mailed in their ballots, even Republicans.

Most of the turnout for the Republican primary was by mail.

-Jacob Solis of The Nevada Independent, thank you for your time.

-Thanks so much.