Alicia Hernandez sat on a sofa in a re- purposed Las Vegas strip-mall store on a sunny Sunday afternoon listening to a step-by-step explanation from a Bernie Sanders field office director about how a presidential caucus works.

Hernandez, 23, a daughter of immigrants who's studying floral design at the College of Southern Nevada, received an email about the training session from Sanders' campaign after liking what she saw on his website. She came to learn how to caucus for the Vermont senator instead of Hillary Clinton.

"Hillary doesn't feel as genuine as Bernie Sanders," Hernandez said, ticking off his support for free college tuition, universal health care, the middle class and immigration. "We want things to change."

Sanders needs a lot of voters like Hernandez in Nevada to overcome Clinton's advantages in the state, which holds the third Democratic presidential nominating contest on Saturday. But there are signs on the ground, such as his ability to rally people like Hernandez to his campaign, that Sanders is gaining on Clinton in the state, which she was counting on as a western firewall after losing in the New Hampshire primary and squeaking out a narrow victory in the Iowa caucuses.

As a caucus state, Nevada is notoriously hard to poll and there are few reliable indicators of how the contest will go. Jon Ralston, a long-time observer of Nevada politics who publishes the Ralston Reports website, wrote in the Washington Post Tuesday that Sanders has been furiously funneling resources into the state. As a result, he wrote, Nevada is no longer a lock for Clinton and that within her campaign "panic is palpable.''

Clinton's campaign started working in Nevada in the spring, months before Sanders. She has most of the major endorsements of elected officials and political leaders. Clinton also learned from running here in 2008 against Barack Obama, even hiring some of his staff from that campaign, when she got more votes but he won more delegates. In addition, national polls show that Clinton has more support among minority voters than Sanders, and Nevada is far more diverse than Iowa or New Hampshire.

For Sanders, it will be the best test so far of whether the enthusiasm he's generating, especially among young people, first-time voters and Latinos, can beat her. If it works in Nevada, it's a model that could help him extend the nominating contest for months. If it doesn't, it could signal the difficulties Sanders' insurgency would have going forward against Clinton.

"Everything in my political gut tells me that we have the momentum here in this state, and if people come out in large numbers on caucus day, we're gonna win," Sanders said during a rally on Sunday in the gym of Bonanza High School in Las Vegas that drew 1,700 people.

Even Sanders supporters such as Tick Segerblom, a state senator and former Nevada Democratic Party chairman, concede it's an "uphill battle" for the Vermont senator in Nevada.

Yet Segerblom said the message from the self-described democratic socialist about a rigged economy benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the middle class has struck a nerve in Nevada, a state still feeling the scars from the Great Recession. The question is whether that's enough to motivate people to show up at about 250 caucus sites across the state on a Saturday morning, he said.

"If Bernie is able to match her, it really shows on his part that he has just really tapped into something," Segerblom said. "I never dreamed, frankly, that the word 'socialism' would actually be acceptable."

Tad Devine, a longtime Democratic strategist and senior Sanders adviser, emphasized the progress he thinks Sanders has made in Nevada despite the advantages and the lead with which Clinton started the race.

"I don't know if we're going to get all the way past her," he said. "Moving a race 30 or 40 points against someone who was there much before you and has spent a lot of money and has a lot of support -- that's a hard thing to move a race that much, but we think we have a real shot to do it."

Marlon Marshall, the Clinton campaign's director of political engagement, said on a conference call with black supporters Monday that Nevada will be closely fought.

While Clinton had a "significant head-start in terms of our organizing" it's "going to be a close contest," he said. "But we're organizing and we're fighting and we're proud of what our team there" is doing.

Clinton's campaign had planned a limited itinerary in Nevada a week out from caucus day. But sensing that the race was getting tighter, they scheduled her to spend three days in the state over the weekend and on Monday.

Clinton staff members have been on the ground in Nevada since she announced her candidacy in April and are working out of seven offices spread across the state. The campaign declined to say how many paid staff it has but said more than 9,000 volunteers have made calls, knocked on doors or been involved in community events.

Sanders opened his first office on Nov. 1 and now boasts the most locations, 12, including in rural areas, with about 100 paid staff, said Joan Kato, Sanders' state director who was Obama's director of Latino outreach in 2008 in Nevada and other states.

Obama won the most delegates in the Silver State by maximizing support in rural areas and holding down Clinton's vote margins in the counties surrounding Las Vegas and Reno, where 92 percent of registered Democrats and 88 percent of all voters live, according to the Nevada secretary of state's office. Nevada also allows same-day registration for its Democratic caucuses. About 30,000 people participated in 2008.

While Kato is working for Sanders, the Clinton campaign hired consultant Jeff Berman, who helped craft Obama's strategy for his 2008 win in Nevada.

Both campaigns are making a concerted outreach to Latinos, who account for about 28 percent of the state's population, as well as blacks and Asians who comprise about 9 percent each. Exit polls from 2008 showed that Clinton won Hispanic voters with 64 percent to Obama's 26 percent, and Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, who ran her 2008 campaign in Nevada, said the former secretary of state has a 40-year history of ties with minority communities.

"A Democrat who is unable to inspire strong levels of support in minority communities will have no credible path to winning the presidency in the general election," Mook wrote in a memo on the night Clinton lost in New Hampshire, assuring supporters that she was on track to dominate primaries in March and win the nomination.

In and around Las Vegas, Clinton's stops have been targeted, from the workers in casinos to a soul-food restaurant and beauty school in a predominantly black neighborhood in North Las Vegas as well as an indoor soccer field where most of the kids and parents were Latino.

"A la bio, A la bao, A la bin, bon, bao! Hillary, Hillary, ra, ra, ra," they chanted, adopting a Mexican cheer.

Still, in 2014, the most recent data available, 62 percent of the Latino population in Nevada was 34 or younger, according to an analysis of federal data by John Tuman, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. That may play to Sanders' appeal among younger voters.

Nevada was hit hard by the recession, especially the housing market. It had the highest monthly foreclosure rate in the United States from January 2007 through February 2012, according to the property-research firm RealtyTrac, and the largest percentage declines in both employment and economic health during that time, the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States shows.

The Latino and black communities were disproportionately affected, Tuman said. While the state's economy has seen a recovery, the unemployment rate in 2014 was 15.4 percent among blacks and 7.5 percent among Latinos, compared with 7.3 percent for whites. That can help Sanders' message resonate, he said.

The decision by the Culinary Workers Union, the state's largest representing 57,000 hospitality workers, to skip making an endorsement — after backing Obama in 2008 — also could make the race more competitive. Fifty-six percent of its members are Latino, and 55 percent are women, Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Arguello-Kline said.

The union is focused on contract negotiations and campaigns for voter registration and citizenship, she said. The Culinary Workers invited both candidates to a rally on Thursday in Las Vegas outside a hospital where it's bargaining over a contract.

On Saturday, Clinton visited the staff cafeteria at Harrah's to shake hands and pose for dozens of selfies with casino workers.

"I need you next Saturday at 11," she implored them.