Nevada’s Democratic caucuses are scheduled to come third on the primary calendar, right after the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Iowa and New Hampshire are dominated by white left-wing activists, Sanders’s core demographic, and that has both of them looking like close contests. Nevada, on the other hand, has a diverse Democratic electorate, dominated by Latinos and union members. The most recent poll of the state’s Democrats put Clinton up by 16 points, and that was before the debate.

Nevada has special significance to Clinton’s team. Two of her top national aides—Robby Mook, her campaign manager, and Marlon Marshall, the director of state campaigns—ran her Nevada operation in 2008, when she took 51 percent of the vote to Obama’s 45 percent on caucus day. It was one of the few caucus states in which Clinton prevailed (though Obama, because he was stronger in rural areas, ended up winning more delegates from the state), and she did it despite having lost the endorsement of the state’s powerful Culinary Union to Obama. In the days leading up to the caucuses, Bill Clinton could be found shaking union members’ hands in casino kitchens, trying to keep the state in his wife’s column.

Nevada is also a microcosm of Clinton’s approach to the campaign nationally. Across the country, she is building similar staff- and office-intensive operations, determined not to get caught off guard by an organization-focused challenger the way she once was by Obama. It’s a risky and expensive strategy. From July to September, Clinton’s fundraising could barely keep pace with her overhead—she spent 90 percent of what she raised keeping her operation running. But Clinton is betting that this approach will box out her primary rivals, by making it impossible for them to compete with her across the map during the primary’s long haul, even if they catch some momentum early on. And in the general election, these state-based operations will be the building blocks of a national ground game.

The Nevada caucuses are a relatively new thing, having joined the ranks of the much-scrutinized early states only in 2008. Largely at the urging of Nevada’s senior senator, Harry Reid, the Democratic National Committee added Nevada to its early calendar, and Republicans added a contest on their side to avoid being outmatched. (This time, the Nevada Republican caucuses are scheduled be held on a different day than the Democratic ones, coming fourth on the calendar—after the South Carolina primary—rather than third.) Reid, who is not running for reelection, believes strongly that his state is superior to the traditional early states. “You go to New Hampshire, there are not any minorities there and nobody lives there,” he told an audience in Las Vegas prior to the debate. Iowa, similarly, is “a place that does not demonstrate what America’s all about,” he said.