In a return to the state that gave him a soaring victory during his last contest for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders again clinched a win in New Hampshire. The result is the second popular-vote victory in a row for Sanders, who captured the greatest share of first- and second-preference votes in Iowa. New Hampshire is relatively friendly territory for the Vermont senator, whose hometown media market overlaps with parts of New Hampshire. Early reports suggest that unlike Iowa, which had relatively low rates of turnout, New Hampshire voters went to the polls at rates approaching or exceeding 2008 levels, a record high. He carried 42 percent of the Latino vote and 33 percent of voters without college degrees, according to preliminary results from CNN.

Like in Iowa, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg performed strongly, coming close behind Sanders in voter support. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar surged to a third-place finish, but both she and Buttigieg have a difficult path ahead, given their lack of support in Super Tuesday states and among voters of color. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden both finished in the single digits, without earning any delegates — a debilitating blow to their campaigns. In 2016, if New Hampshire was the state where the Sanders campaign first came to life, Nevada was where it died. Sanders was hopeful for a victory in the caucuses there but fell just short, 53 to 47 percent, amid acrimony and allegations of misconduct. It dampened his momentum heading into South Carolina, where he was trounced.

2020 could be different. Nevada is also considered the first real test of a presidential candidate’s appeal to voters of color. Latinos make up almost a third of the state’s population, and Sanders is counting on strong support from the voting bloc to carry him to victory. Biden, meanwhile, ditched his own primary night party in New Hampshire to head over to South Carolina, which holds its contest a week after the Nevada caucuses. At the same time, the leadership of the powerful casino workers’ Culinary Union — Unite Here Local 226 — ramped up its attacks against Sanders on Tuesday with English and Spanish-language flyers, texts, and emails to its 60,000 members.

The Granite State has a long tradition of populist and anti-war movements going back to the near victory of Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 Democratic primary. McCarthy’s strong showing in the state on an anti-Vietnam War platform convinced incumbent President Lyndon Johnson to abandon his reelection campaign. The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker initiative, has made New Hampshire its focus for organizing communities around issues of justice, especially on foreign policy and poverty. Sanders’s message on challenging economic inequality, promoting Medicare for All, and his leadership in opposing the Iraq War and the more recent push to cut U.S. support for the war in Yemen provided a clear contrast with his competitors and a clarion call for voters, particularly those between the ages of 18 and 44, a demographic he readily won thanks in part to college and youth organizing efforts. But 29 percent of voters who said foreign policy was their most important issue voted for Buttigieg, and 9 percent supported Sanders. In many respects, the Sanders victory was equally a defeat for the Warren and Biden campaigns. In October, Biden and Warren enjoyed a comfortable lead in the polls. Warren, after a disappointing showing in Iowa, had hoped for a comeback in New Hampshire, which also shares a media market with her home state of Massachusetts. Buttigieg, who declared victory in Iowa despite a hazy tabulation of state delegates, benefited from momentum going into New Hampshire. Thirty percent of voters who said they decided on their candidate within the last few days supported him. (Thirty-six percent who decided before the last few days voted for Sanders.) On the airwaves, VoteVets, a Democratic soft money group, poured roughly $400,000 in advertisements in support of Buttigieg, hoping to harness enthusiasm for the former mayor as he headed into New Hampshire. Buttigieg carried 33 percent of voters with household incomes over $100,000, while Sanders got votes from 34 percent of voters with household incomes under $50,000. Klobuchar, who had earned about 20 percent of the vote as of Tuesday night, led among white college-educated women and voters who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary. Two candidates — Andrew Yang, a 44-year-old former businessman who campaigned on giving every American adult a monthly check for $1,000, and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet — dropped out of the presidential race as primary results began rolling in. The Vermont senator also faced a variety of hurdles going into the election. Cable networks, particularly MSNBC, favored by Democrats, had spent the days after Sanders’s popular vote victory in Iowa skewering the senator, with hosts going so far as to compare his zealous supporters to Nazis and to claim that a presidency led by Sanders could lead to mass executions. For the first time, Nevada will be holding several days of early voting ahead of its February 22 caucuses. Early voting, which runs from February 15 to 18, will take place in over 80 locations across the state. In response to last week’s disaster in Iowa, however, Nevada Democratic officials are abandoning plans to use the app whose issues contributed to ongoing delays and inconsistencies in their results. Instead of using the app, which was developed by a company known as Shadow Inc., the Nevada Democratic Party will be using a “tool” preloaded to iPads and distributed to precinct chairs. The Culinary Union, which is mostly made up of women and Latinos, has been actively discouraging support for Sanders and Warren over Medicare for All, warning its members that a single-payer plan would “end” their health care — despite not yet having made an official endorsement in the race. Chuck Rocha, a senior Sanders adviser, said the campaign has been reaching out to culinary workers directly. “We’ve been directly calling them at their homes, talking to them at their work sites, and sending them mail, we’ve sent hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail to culinary workers who are Latino in Nevada talking about where Bernie Sanders stands,” Rocha said. “And we have huge support among the culinary rank-and-file.”