On the Democratic side, there are 10 states plus American Samoa voting tomorrow, and while not all of them have been polled lately, just about all of those that have show Hillary Clinton leading, with the exception of Sanders’ home state of Vermont. Even in Massachusetts, where Sanders had taken a lead, Clinton may have moved back in front. And while delegates in these contests are awarded proportionally — meaning Sanders won’t have to win in order to keep amassing them — the final tally of wins and losses matters more for him than it does for her.

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That’s because a campaign like the one Sanders is running is a very fragile thing. When an unexpected candidate builds an effort that is designed to be not just a campaign but a movement, complete with lots of talk about revolution and transformation, it needs to keep excitement high in order to maintain momentum. It has to look like it’s constantly building and growing, not just to bring in new supporters but to hold on to the ones it has. It attract voters when it’s still an unlikely cause to join, and then when it’s a surprisingly successful cause that looks like it has a chance of creating its promised revolution. But if it starts to look like a cause that has had its moment and then begun to decline, it no longer holds the same attraction. On one hand, every campaign wants an air of excitement to surround it, and Sanders has certainly had that more than Clinton has. But on the other hand, Democratic voters seem happy to vote for Clinton even if they do so without a flutter in their heart and a spring in their step; unlike Sanders, she doesn’t need excitement to win.

Things are further complicated by the fact that Sanders’ campaign is built so much on young voters. That’s a terrific thing in many ways, but the problem with young voters is that it’s always uncertain whether they’ll turn out. You need to keep them revved up in order to guarantee their arrival at the polls.

Look, for instance, at what happened in South Carolina on Saturday. According to the exit poll Sanders won young voters, but not by as much as he had in earlier states: he beat Clinton among those under 30 by 54-46. But among those over 65, who made up a larger portion of the voters, Clinton absolutely crushed him, by a margin of 88-11.

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South Carolina may be distinct because of the extremely large proportion of the electorate that is African-American (61 percent of those who voted on Saturday), but the point is that the voters Clinton does well with are those who reliably turn out in Democratic primaries, particularly older voters and African-Americans. Sanders’ voters might turn out in any given contest, but Clinton’s voters almost certainly will no matter what.

Then there’s the question of how the media will react to the Super Tuesday results, which is where the idea of fairness comes in. The word “narrative” is overused, but it’s still an important idea. The narrative that surrounds Sanders’ campaign is already moving away from “shockingly strong effort attracting huge crowds of Democrats yearning for revolutionary change” and toward “interesting phenomenon that ultimately wasn’t strong enough to win.” If Clinton wins nearly all of the contests on Super Tuesday, that will be the story reporters will write: You did better than anyone expected, Bernie, but now it’s almost over.

That won’t be fair, but it could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy, discouraging Sanders voters from turning out in the rest of the primaries and convincing the undecided to move to the candidate who looks like she’s winning.

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Now for the necessary caveats. If Sanders does better tomorrow than I’m positing, it will be interpreted completely differently, his revival a new twist in the campaign after Clinton’s win in South Carolina. And either way, Sanders has one thing most insurgent candidates don’t: large amounts of money. As of the end of last month, he had raised nearly $100 million, an astonishing amount for a candidate with his profile. We don’t yet know how much he brought in during February, but it was certainly in the tens of millions. And many of those small donors ($27!) are still loyal to Sanders and can be tapped for more contributions, which can keep the campaign going.