Clinton escapes Nevada with narrow victory

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday escaped with a narrow victory in the Nevada caucuses, with 52.1 percent of the vote, to 47.8 percent for longtime socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But it was Sanders, in his concession statement, who claimed he has "the wind at our backs" going into Super Tuesday.

After all, Clinton set up shop in Nevada about a year ago. Then over the winter, Sanders moved in and nearly pulled off an upset.

Sanders said in his statement that he congratulated Clinton, he's proud of his campaign, and he's expecting to leave Nevada with a "solid share" of the delegates available there.

He told reporters he thinks his march for the Democratic presidential nomination has "the wind at our backs."

The preliminary indications suggested that Clinton would end up with about 18 delegates, with 14 for Sanders.

Given the party's superdelegates who have been committing to Clinton early, she now has a little more than one-fifth of the needed 2,383. Sanders has about 70.

On Twitter, Clinton thanked her supporters.

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"This is your win," she said, addressing her comments to "everyone who turned out in every corner of Nevada with determination and heart."

The Review Journal reported in the afternoon that the Associated Press called the race for Clinton around 2:15, about the same time as Fox News.

Nevada is the third state to have early voting for Democrats. Clinton claimed the victory earlier in Iowa, although a number of reports suggested that the results, some of which were based on the flip of a coin, easily might have ended up reversed.

Sanders handily took the victory in New Hampshire.

The Washington Post said Clinton had an early advantage because of her on-the-ground organization early in 2015.

And the report said, "For about six months, it seemed Sanders did not even know Nevada was on the map."

The report said Sanders' Nevada campaign was not in disarray only because "there really was no Nevada campaign."

So how did Clinton reportedly win by only a few points?

At the beginning of 2016, Sanders started pushing resources at the state, launching offices, calling on voters and more. He ended up trailing by on a few percentage points.

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