Sanders claimed victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, but the first was contested and the second notably slim. In Iowa, Sanders won more of the popular vote — a shade over 2,000 more votes than former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, or 1.4 points — yet Buttigieg actually walked away with two more delegates. In New Hampshire, Sanders beat Buttigieg by fewer than 4,000 votes — 1.3 percentage points — but emerged with the same number of delegates.

Nevada was different. It was a Sanders blowout.

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On Sunday morning, with a pathetic 60 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders had 46 percent of the delegates, trailed badly by former vice president Joe Biden with 19.6 percent and Buttigieg at 15.3 percent. Sanders skeptics could comfort themselves after Iowa and New Hampshire that the sum of the vote of his rivals far exceeded Sanders’s support, underscoring the degree to which Democrats seemed to prefer a more moderate alternative. That argument was not available in Nevada.

As significant as Sanders’s totals was the accompanying diversity of the coalition he assembled. Four years ago, Sanders lagged badly behind Hillary Clinton in most contests in attracting minority voters. This year in Nevada, the first voting state with a significant minority population, Sanders demonstrated strength with that critical coalition. Four years ago in Nevada, Clinton won 76 percent of the African American vote to Sanders’s 22 percent; this year, Sanders secured 27 percent of the African American vote in the more crowded field, compared with Biden’s 39 percent. Likewise, Sanders won an outright majority of Latino voters, 51 percent, effectively matching his 53 percent four years ago.

That wasn’t all. The powerful Culinary Workers Union declined to endorse a candidate but warned that Sanders’s Medicare-for-all proposal risked undoing their members hard-bargained and expansive health-care benefits; nonetheless, 34 percent of union households backed Sanders, far more than the closest second, Biden with 21 percent. On ideological grounds, Sanders not only prevailed with voters who described themselves as very liberal (49 percent) or somewhat liberal (29 percent), he also won nearly a quarter of voters who called themselves moderate or conservative, the same 24 percent share of that group who backed Biden. Sanders won with every age group except those over 65.

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The nomination battle isn’t over, not yet. Biden can hang on at least through South Carolina, where he still leads in the polls, although his numbers have been dropping and Sanders has surged. A new CBS News poll finds Biden with 28 percent of the vote there, and Sanders at 23 percent; ominously, Biden’s support among African Americans, who account for more than 60 percent of the state’s Democratic voters, has fallen by 19 points since November, from 54 percent to 35 percent.

Meantime, former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg’s billions have propelled him toward the top of the field — in the current RealClearPolitics national average, he is at 15 percent to Sanders’s 29 percent and Biden’s 17 percent. Bloomberg is positioned to do well in the expensive Super Tuesday states March 3, if another disastrous debate performance does not sink him.

But, but, but. The current betting has to be on Sanders. First, his opponents can’t win by taking turns nipping at Sanders’s heels and dividing the non-Sanders vote: Buttigieg doing well in Iowa, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar coming in third in New Hampshire, Biden hanging on in Nevada. On this score, Bloomberg’s role threatens to be more spoiler than savior, further dividing the field.

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Second, Sanders is the only candidate who has the financial structure — an enormous pool of low-dollar donors who can compete with Bloomberg, if not on a level playing field. Sanders has raised more ($133 million, as of the end of January) and spent more ($116 million) than any non-billionaire candidate. He had nearly $17 million on hand at the end of January, while his rivals were running out of fuel; Biden and Buttigieg had about $7 million each, Klobuchar and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) even less.

Finally, the party’s delegate selection rules operate in Sanders’s favor in a multicandidate field. His rivals can’t win any delegates at all unless they reach 15 percent of the vote. That allows Sanders to win a plurality but amass an outsized share of delegates.

All of this is a recipe for disaster: a contested convention that leaves the party bitterly divided, or a Sanders nomination that will face an extraordinary electoral map challenge. Meanwhile, this dish is getting dangerously close to cooked.

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