“I expect to win Texas,” boasted Cristobal Alex, a senior adviser to Biden and native of El Paso, Texas. “The polls don’t account for results in South Carolina, which are game-changing. ...This is more than anything a numbers game and it’s about math.”

The makeup of Texas, though diverse like California, presents more opportunity for Biden’s brand of moderate politics when compared to the massive West Coast behemoth. Texas’ Democratic primary electorate is roughly 20 percent African American, a third Latino and 20 percent under the age of 30 — providing plenty of positives for both Biden and Sanders.

Sanders made a swing through the Lone Star State after dominating in Nevada Feb. 20 -- right as early voting started, making prognosticators in the state predict those numbers will favor Sanders.

However, three-quarters of the electorate that cast early ballots are over the age of 40 according to Ryan Data & Research, a Texas political analytics firm that tracks early votes. That could be an advantage for Biden, who generally polls well with middle-aged and older voters.

Also, Biden is betting that his nearly 30-point win in South Carolina, the endorsements of former rivals O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, his name ID and recent trips to the state will be enough to catch Sanders. Biden is looking to prevent a massive windfall of delegates going to the self-described democratic socialist: Texas will award 261 delegates Tuesday, 233 fewer than California.

Sanders' campaign isn’t impressed with Biden’s 11th-hour, shoestring operation in the state. On Monday, Biden swung through Houston and Dallas — two of the biggest Democratic population centers chock full of Biden-leaning voters — and announced the endorsements of O’Rourke, Klobochar and Buttigieg and Klobuchar.

“I’m sure Vice President Biden is very popular in Texas, but he just hasn't put in the work,” said Chuck Rocha, a senior adviser to Sanders. “You can't show up in our community at the last minute and think you're going to get elected off of name ID. You've got to invest in the community — that's why we have spent the second-most amount of money talking to Latinos in that state behind billionaire Michael Bloomberg.”

Daron R. Shaw, a pollster and political science professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said it could be too little, too late for Biden.

“Bernie was brilliant in making a run through Texas last week to lock down early votes and insulating his standing from Biden’s post-South Carolina momentum,” Shaw said. Sanders could be so far ahead in early votes, Shaw said, that Biden would need to win Election Day by double digits. “That’s a tall order,” he said.

Rep. Marc Veasey, a Congressional Black Caucus member who represents a Fort Worth, Texas district that encompasses some Dallas suburbs, said after Sanders’ win in Nevada, Democrats in his hometown started worrying about the Vermont senator running away with the nomination. Veasey endorsed Biden last year, and despite Sanders’ strength, is confident Biden will do well in Texas, if not win it.

“When I went to church on Sunday you should have [seen] the anxiety people had and the questions that people were asking me. Like, ‘Is it true that he’s a socialist? What is a socialist? Are we still going to be able to beat Donald Trump now? Is it true that Bernie was going to primary Obama?’” Veasey said.

But Biden has to battle Sanders' ground game. Sanders’ campaign first put boots on the ground four months ago, and has six long-term offices and 18 staging locations, mini offices where people gather ahead of canvassing and phone banking. Polls in the field before the Saturday election in South Carolina favor Sanders: An NBC/Marist poll had him in first with 34 percent support compared to Biden’s 19 percent. A CBS poll had Sanders leading Biden, 31 percent to 26 percent.

Sanders campaign has spent $3.6 million across English and Spanish-language TV in Texas, second only to Bloomberg, who has spent $48.8 million across all TV buys. Biden has spent just $343,800 on TV in Texas, but none on Spanish-language stations — a repeat of its decision in Nevada to forgo that medium.

According to Biden’s campaign, only 6 percent of his Latino supporters speak Spanish as a first language.

Bloomberg is the X-factor in Texas and Super Tuesday writ large. Before his loss in Iowa and Bloomberg’s saturation of the airwaves in Texas, Biden led Sanders in the state.

“Without question Bloomberg’s candidacy is taking a bite out of Biden,” said Rep. Filemon Vela, (D-Texas). “My message to people here going into Tuesday is that a vote for Bloomberg is a vote for Bernie, so better not to waste it and vote for [Biden].”

Vela, who supports Biden, expressed confidence that he would win South Texas, where his district is located along the Texas-Mexico border.

Some Texas Democrats aren’t pleased with Bloomberg.

“The chatter in the political class is we hate the fact Bloomberg has come in with tens of millions of his own money and spent it on himself instead of really helping with Senate races and gubernatorial races and flipping House seats,” said Sonia Van Meter, a consultant on four Democratic congressional races in the state. She said field staff are increasingly encountering voters leaning toward Biden because he’s a “known commodity” and there’s rising concern that Sanders won’t match up as well against President Donald Trump.

Bloomberg’s campaign has 19 offices and 180 staffers on the ground in Texas. Alejandra Soto, a spokesperson for Bloomberg, rejected the idea that the billionaire businessman’s candidacy has helped Sanders. A Sanders aide admitted that Bloomberg’s outreach to Latinos made the campaign nervous that he might siphon support from that bloc of voters, but added that the time and resouces Sanders has put into the state puts him on solid footing.

"The machinery and support of the Republican Party is huge, so we’re going to need a lot more than idealism and super-left progressive ideas to even attempt to go against that machinery," said Soto.

POLITICO NEWSLETTERS 2020 Elections Unpacking the national conventions and the race for the White House. Sign Up Loading By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

State Sen. Royce West, a Senate candidate from Dallas, said he believes Bloomberg will ultimately win few votes relative to the millions he's spent and that Biden will pull ahead because of the support of moderate white voters and African Americans.

Unless moderate voters fatally split their votes, he said, Sanders will lose because he’s too far left.

“The tenor I’m hearing when I’m campaigning around the state is we’ve got to have someone who can beat Trump,” West sad. “And it’s going to be real difficult to beat Trump if you have a candidate saying he’s a democratic socialist.”

