Trump isn’t on Nevada’s ballot but not for the reasons you think

Donald Trump has been fighting tooth and nail to stay on the Republican primary ballot in Colorado but there’s also another important state where he will not be on the primary but it’s not for the reasons you might think. 

While the former president has been working on sorting out the issue of whether or not states can withhold his name from their primary ballots based on the 14th Amendment, Nevada excluded Trump for another reason.

Trump is being kept off the primary ballot in Nevada because his campaign team didn’t submit the paperwork required. However, the situation is much more complicated than a few state staffers forgetting to do their jobs. 

Nevada has traditionally been a caucus state, according to Newsweek, which means a candidate was chosen by voters who attended precinct meetings and physically divided themselves into groups of who they backed.

A statewide primary ballot was not how candidates were chosen, but the state passed a law that required political parties in Nevada to hold a state-run primary election when more than a single candidate was running.  

It was this law that created some confusion for voters since the Republican caucus in Nevada will be held on February 8th while the state-run primary is planned to take place on February 6th, two days before the caucus. 

Newsweek reported candidates are only allowed to run in one of the two primary options in Nevada, which explains why the state's campaign staffers didn’t file the paperwork to have the former president run in the primary. 

“As hilarious as it would have been if this was the product of a paperwork snafu committed by an incompetently run campaign, Trump’s absence from Nevada’s primary ballot was wholly intentional,” wrote the Nevada Independent’s David Colborne. 

However, the most interesting aspect of Nevada's primary system when it comes to the Republican Party is that the state-run primary will have absolutely no bearing on who the GOP chooses as their presidential nominee. 

Newsweek reported that the Republican Party will use the results from its caucus rather than those from the state-run primary in order to pick which GOP candidate will win the state’s 26 delegates. So why hold the state primary?

The state-run primary is a largely symbolic gesture, according to Newsweek. Most of the leading candidates seeking to win Nevada’s delegates have decided to run in the state’s caucus rather than Nevada's state-run primary. 

Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Chris Christie are among the candidates running in the caucus race while Nikki Haley is the only major Republican figure who will appear on the state’s primary ballot, though it isn’t likely to matter. 

Trump holds an extremely commanding lead over his political opponents in Nevada and a recent poll from Emerson College conducted from January 5th to the 8th revealed that the former president had a 65-point lead over his closest competitor Ron DeSantis. 

Roughly 73% of likely Republican voters in Nevada said that they planned to choose the former president while DeSantis came in a very distant second with single-digit support sitting at just 8% according to The Hill’s reporting. 

“With Nikki Haley opting to be named on the state primary ballot on Feb. 6 rather than the party caucus on Feb. 8, Trump does not have much competition on the ballot,” said Executive Director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball in a report. 

On January 10th, a federal judge in Nevada rejected the argument that Trump could be held off the primary ballot in the state based on the same 14th Amendment issues that he was dealign with in Colorado according to a separate report from The Hill.