Jennifer Jacobs

The Des Moines Register

LAS VEGAS — The outcome of Saturday’s race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is a giant question mark, but the beauty of Nevada is that there is a very simple equation for how a Democrat wins a statewide race here, insiders say.

For Clinton to be victorious in the Nevada caucuses, she needs blacks and Latinos to turn out in numbers like in the 2008 race, and she needs to carry that Las Vegas-based segment of the electorate. She has to make sure she doesn’t get swamped in rural counties like she did running against Barack Obama eight years ago. And although she doesn’t need to dominate Nevada’s other population base — Reno — she needs to post a decent showing there.

“Our state is a three-pronged approach,” said Leo Murrieta, a Democratic political consultant and Latino activist in Las Vegas who supports Clinton.

Sanders, who didn’t open his first office here until October, three months later than Clinton, must thwart her meticulously planned strategy in those three areas by stoking the last-minute fever of enthusiasm that left-leaning Nevadans are feeling for him, strategists said.

“I feel really good about our chances here,” said Rania Batrice, a spokeswoman for the Sanders campaign, which now has 12 offices in Nevada. “We have a fantastic team on the ground, and they brought in equally amazing volunteers who are not only inspired by Bernie’s message, but they believe change is possible.”

Why is the outcome in Nevada such a mystery?

But when Sanders backers voice giddy optimism that the 74-year-old Vermont senator might actually win Nevada, it’s often with a look of wide-eyed wonderment at the twist the race has taken here.

It was just a little more than five weeks ago that Clinton’s national campaign manager, Robby Mook, who ran her Nevada campaign eight years ago, told reporters that internal polling showed her with a 25-point lead in Nevada.

Although Nevada polling has been scarce, the 68-year-old former secretary of State is now just 2 points head of Sanders in a rolling average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.com.

“If Bernie wins, the hype machine is going to take off in a really, really serious way,” said Ed Kilgore, a Democratic analyst and political columnist for New York magazine.

USA TODAY's 2016 Presidential Poll Tracker

“If Clinton wins,” Kilgore added, “we’re back to the situation where she’s very likely to win South Carolina and most of the states that vote on March 1 – in no small part because of her strength among African Americans, which has slipped a small bit but is still pretty impressive.”

Democratic strategists say that for Sanders or Clinton to win, they need to juice these three segments of Nevada as much as possible:

The minority vote

If you’re a presidential candidate who wants to win in Nevada, you have to run like you want to be mayor of Las Vegas, political operatives here say. About 74% of Nevada’s active registered Democrats live in Clark County, and most of Nevada’s 48.5% non-white population lives in the Vegas area, state elections and 2014 census records show.

Minorities and suburban women in the Las Vegas area are key for Clinton, and she’ll need to win by a large enough margin to withstand losses elsewhere, strategists said.

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“She has to win them over enough that they are moved to action. I think there’s an important distinction there,” said Yvanna Cancela, political director for the Culinary Union in Nevada, which is neutral in the caucus race.

One big X-factor is whether black voters will turn out in the same number as in 2008, when Obama was running. Fifteen percent of the caucus electorate then was black.

Clinton supporter Sakina Turner, a middle-school cafeteria worker who will help run the caucus in her Las Vegas neighborhood of 638 registered Democrats, said: “When I talk to my African Americans, they like Hillary, but some of them are coming around for Bernie.”

But it’s Latinos — the largest minority group with 28% of the total population – who might prove the key factor. Clinton beat Obama by a more than 2-to-1 among Latinos in 2008, according to entrance polls. They made up 15% of the caucus electorate back then.

“I love your enthusiasm! It gets me all pumped up!” Clinton told a couple hundred cheering supporters, mostly Latinos, gathered for a campaign rally outside a labor union hall in east Las Vegas on Thursday night.

Clinton’s campaign aides are the best in the business in Nevada, but it’s one of the hardest states to organize in, strategists said. Las Vegas is on a 24-hour clock, and the prime time for TV ads targeting certain minority voters might be 2 a.m., after they’re done with work. Nevada has more residents per capita in gated communities than any other battleground state, and it’s often too hot in summer to do door-to-door campaigning, anyway, operatives said.

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The tourism-based economy attracts a transient workforce, which means many aren’t yet registered to vote, they added. Of Clinton’s seven Nevada offices, three are in Clark County. She has the backing of almost all the Democrats in the Nevada Legislature, and every member of the Latino caucus except Moises Denis, who is sitting out the presidential race because Republican candidate Marco Rubio is his cousin.

But a growing number of minority voters are siding with Sanders, including the Clark County Black Caucus — “which is very exciting,” Batrice said.

Reno area

Nevada’s other main population center is Reno, a recreational area near Lake Tahoe that’s a nine-hour drive or one-hour plane ride from Las Vegas. It’s home to about 16% of the state’s residents, including a big environmentalist community.

Democrats there have a history of progressive politics and anti-establishment thinking – a profile that Sanders aides believe favors their candidate. Team Sanders has been investing resources, hoping to run up their score there.

Washoe County is also delegate rich, with 1,962 precinct delegates, though that pales compared to Clark County's 8,975.

The rural counties

The state’s other 1,422 precinct delegates are in the more rural counties, which account for about 11% of the state’s population. The caucus makeup there is overwhelmingly white – and that could favor Sanders, said Murrieta. In 2008, Clinton won the popular vote in the Nevada caucuses, but Obama edged her in the delegate count – partly due to his success in the rural areas.

Both Sanders and Clinton have visited Elko County, in a north corner of the state, and Clinton sent her husband to Nye, a county that neighbors Clark, but usually doesn’t get much presidential attention, Murrieta said.

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Clinton backers don’t think she needs to win a majority of the rural counties, but must do well enough that she’s competitive. Those areas, home to some loyal Democrats, are an important piece of the caucus strategy, Cancela said. In the urban areas, some Nevadans, like Americans in other parts of the country, “are not super enthused” about the race, she said.

But that’s not always the case.

Las Vegas union electrician Forrest Darby, who is white, said he backs Sanders “because you never have to worry that the things he’s saying are true. He’s an absolute truth teller.”

Darby predicted that “Bernie’s going to win the caucuses in Nevada by less than 1%.” Meanwhile, Katherine Newsom, a retired histology technician who is black, thinks Clinton, her favored candidate, will prevail.

“God, I hope so,” she said.

“Time to bring some estrogen up there in the White House.”

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