Mrs Clinton's camp angrily disputed those numbers, saying it wasn't possible to lose the Hispanic vote since she won Hispanic-majority precincts as well as Clark County, home of Las Vegas and the most heavily Hispanic part of the state. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. Credit:Charles Rex Arbogast Mrs Clinton herself disputed the loss of the Hispanic vote. "You know, that's just not what our analysis shows, number one," she said on CNN's State of the Union. "We don't believe that the so-called entry polls were particularly accurate. If you look at the precincts, you look at where we dominated, there's a lot of evidence we did very, very well with every group of voter."

There is no way to ever know for sure who won the Hispanic vote because official voting results do not break down votes by race. Hillary and Bill Clinton: "if Trump starts telling stories about Bill Clinton’s love life there may be no stopping him". Credit:AP Mr Lenski said Edison polled 1024 caucus participants – which he called a large enough sample and roughly the same size as the polls in the past two caucuses in Nevada – at 25 caucus locations with a margin of error of 7 percentage points. He said Mr Sanders' numbers were driven by differences in Hispanics by age. According to the poll, Mr Sanders won Hispanic caucus-voters ages 17 to 29 by 83 to 12 per cent, and Mrs Clinton won those ages 30 and above by 65 to 34 per cent. A similar split in age groups was seen in the first two primaries, in Iowa and New Hampshire. Mr Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist who talks about launching a "political revolution", has resonated with new and young voters frustrated with Washington.

Mrs Clinton scored a decisive victory in Nevada, regardless of who won the Hispanic vote. But both campaigns claimed they won the Hispanic vote because it's an important barometer for other diverse states to come, including Texas and Colorado, and it enables them to assure supporters of their broad electoral strength. "What we learnt today is Hillary Clinton's firewall with Latino voters is a myth," Mr Sanders' deputy political director, Arturo Carmona, said. "The Latino community responded strongly to Bernie Sanders' message of immigration reform and creating an economy that works for all families. This is critically important as we move ahead to states like Colorado, Arizona, Texas and California." Mr Lenski cited several other explanations for the numbers. Some younger Hispanics, particularly college students, might not live in the majority-Hispanic precincts to which the Clinton campaign refers. The Democratic Party does not release the initial preferences of all 80,000 caucus-goers, just which delegates the candidates received. And he said 3 per cent of caucus-goers were undecided or might have changed their minds after they went into a caucus. MCT Follow FairfaxForeign on Twitter