Next stop Nevada on express to presidential election

Joe Biden and Donald Trump will pass each other in battleground state as they move towards an apparently inevitable battle for the White House in November.

Joe Biden hugs son Hunter as they leave The Ivy restaurant in Los Angeles on Sunday. Picture: AFP

President Joe Biden and Donald Trump will pass each other in the battleground state of Nevada as they move towards an apparently inevitable battle for the White House in November.

Mr Biden arrived in Las Vegas on Sunday (Monday AEDT), buoyed by his victory in the South Carolina Democratic Party primary on Saturday, the first contest in which the US President has ­appeared on the ballot.

He will spend two days in Nevada, where he narrowly defeated Mr Trump in 2020, trying to energise Democrat voters for the primay on Tuesday. Republicans will also hold a primary contest this week but Mr Trump will not be on the ballot. Instead, the former president will run unopposed in a caucus on Thursday.

Hoping for a show of force in South Carolina, where he pledged to “make Donald Trump a loser again”, Mr Biden won 96.2 per cent of the vote, trouncing two longshot challengers. It means that Mr Biden wins all 55 state delegates for the party convention in August. The only shadow was an underwhelming turnout of 132,000 voters, compared with the 536,949 in 2020, when victory in South Carolina revived Mr Biden’s campaign after big losses in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Turnout this year was expected to be down, with the incumbent president’s march to the Democrat nomination all but assured. Nervous Democrats are scanning the results, however, for signs of waning enthusiasm that may prompt voters to stay at home.

The Biden campaign will be encouraged by stronger turnout among black voters, a crucial demographic for his re-election hopes. Results put the share of black voters 13 per cent higher than in 2020, following a series of polls indicating that the African-American vote was beginning to drift away from the Democrats.

Mr Biden said after the poll: “The people of South Carolina have spoken again, and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the presidency again and making Donald Trump a loser again.”

Mr Trump faces concerns about turnout and voter apathy of his own in Nevada, after the ­bizarre scenario that will have the former president and Nikki Haley competing in separate polls this week, though Ms Haley is barely contesting the state, focusing ­instead on a showdown with Mr Trump in her home state of South Carolina later this month.

On Saturday she appeared as herself before a mock town hall on Saturday Night Live putting questions to Mr Trump, who was played by the comedian James Austin Johnson. The skit poked fun at Mr Trump’s recent confusion between Ms Haley and the former House speaker Nancy ­Pelosi, a gaffe that Ms Haley has mocked on the campaign trail. “Are you doing OK, Donald? You might need a mental competency test,” she said on the show.

The Times