LAS VEGAS — The race is for second place in Saturday’s Democratic presidential caucuses in Nevada, as the months Sen. Bernie Sanders invested in organizing Latino voters here are making him the candidate to beat in the first voting state whose diverse electorate resembles California’s.

Nevada looks nothing like Iowa and New Hampshire, the nearly all-white states that preceded it in the campaign lineup. About 30% of Nevada’s population is Latino and 10% is black. Asian Americans make up 10% of Clark County, home to Las Vegas — triple the total of 20 years ago.

What those voters do Saturday will provide a preview of California’s March 3 primary.

“I think California will be all about momentum. That’s why we’re here,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a national co-chair of Joe Biden’s campaign, after introducing the former vice president in Spanish before 150 people in a largely Latino neighborhood here over the weekend. “That’s why we’re all in on Nevada. Three-quarters of California’s vote is going to be about (following) where they feel momentum is.”

With half a dozen major candidates still in the race, “nobody is going to get 50% here,” said Robert Lang, an urban affairs professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. “And without a clear front-runner, that’s going to make those Super Tuesday states (including California) even more important.”

But predicting what will happen in Nevada is difficult, beyond a probable strong showing by Sanders. There isn’t much polling in the state, though what little there is shows Sanders ahead. He’s the choice of 33% of Latino registered voters surveyed in Nevada, followed by Biden at 22%, according to a poll released Tuesday by Univision News and the Latino Community Foundation.

One of the states’ most reliable political barometers — the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union, which represents hotel and casino employees on the Strip — decided not to endorse anyone after feuding with Sanders over his proposal to eliminate private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan.

The depth of Sanders’ organizing strength in Nevada is shown by how his campaign pulled together a soccer tournament for young people Monday in a Latino neighborhood in east Las Vegas. After the matches ended, campaign workers drove the young men to early voting caucus stations.

“It shows how much he cares about the Latin people in this neighborhood,” said Gustavo Luna, 18. “We haven’t heard from any of the other candidates other than Bernie.”

Many of the other campaigns are playing defense against the Vermont senator. Biden in particular is appealing to union members with the same message that made the Culinary Workers decide to stay on the sidelines — that Sanders will take away hard-won private health insurance plans.

Sanders is so confident about Nevada that he is attacking Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor who is focused on the Super Tuesday states and isn’t even on the ballot here. Sanders has spent the past several days railing against Bloomberg for the “racist” stop-and-frisk policing policy he championed in New York that mainly targeted young blacks and Latinos, and for using his wealth to “buy” the Democratic nomination.

“If there is a large voter turnout here in Nevada, I believe we are going to win the caucuses,” Sanders told several hundred supporters at a rally Tuesday at UNLV. “And when we win the caucuses here, we are going to do really well in South Carolina, in California and on Super Tuesday. And if we do well on Super Tuesday, we’re going to win the Democratic nomination.”

Sanders ended his rally by leading many in the crowd to an early voting site a few hundred yards away on campus, where some had been waiting nearly two hours to vote.

Line for early voting at #NVcaucus site at ⁦@unlv⁩ - person at front of line been waiting nearly two hours to vote pic.twitter.com/17PdyS6Hn9 — Joe Garofoli (@joegarofoli) February 18, 2020

Other candidates are playing catch-up in appealing to Nevada’s nonwhite Democrats. Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg was joined onstage at a Las Vegas rally by Keegan-Michael Key of the Key and (Jordan) Peele comedy team, both of whom are biracial. Yvette Nicole Brown, an African American actress who co-starred in the TV show “Community,” introduced Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at a Las Vegas town hall. Former federal Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, the only Latino candidate in the race until he dropped out, joined Warren on a visit to a Latino neighborhood.

Biden, trying to pull out of the tailspin caused by the results in Iowa and New Hampshire, is banking on support from voters like Cynthia Lee, a 67-year-old African American resident of Las Vegas. She has seen the cost of the medicines she takes for diabetes double to $700 a month over the past three years. She wants the next president to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

“Joe can get it done, because he helped pass the Affordable Care Act. Without that, I’m not here,” Lee said at a Biden organizing event in a predominantly black and Latino neighborhood. “He’s been there, done that.”

Nothing against Buttigieg, said Lee’s friend Cheryl Terry, 68, “but we just don’t know him. And Bernie Sanders? I love what he has to say, but he’s a career politician. He’s been there like 30 years. What’s he done?”

But others, like Derek Hayes, don’t think Biden “has the energy” anymore.

“Biden seems to be fading,” Hayes, 67, said outside a Buttigieg rally in a Latino neighborhood on Las Vegas’ north side. “And I’m a Biden fan.”

But Hayes is not enough of a fan to vote for him. He is wavering between Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who poured most of her resources into Iowa and New Hampshire and got a late start here. She just recently began advertising on Spanish-language TV.

Voters are switching loyalties by the month, searching for the person with the best chance to defeat President Trump. A few months ago, Jamie Chrisman was backing Biden. The other day, he was standing in line to take a selfie with Warren at a town hall rally.

“Look at her,” Chrisman said as many of the several hundred people at the event waited in the selfie line with him. “She’s 70 going on 20. Her biggest problem is that she’s allowed people to brand her as a socialist. She’s not. She’s (an anti-corruption crusader) like Teddy Roosevelt.”

Buttigieg’s Nevada campaign is focused on a different number: the 100 first-time volunteers who joined up last weekend after his strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. They enabled the campaign to knock on four times as many doors as before the Iowa caucuses. It helped Buttigieg draw more than 1,000 people to a rally Sunday at Rancho High School in a predominantly Latino east Las Vegas neighborhood.

As Peter Guzman, president of the Latin Chamber of Commerce, said in introducing Buttigieg before 60 people at the chamber Saturday night in Las Vegas, “This is a get-to-know-you-better” conversation.

Even at this late date, some Democrats are still trying to get to know Buttigieg, Sanders and all the rest. Jackie Forsting said she still hadn’t made up her mind even as she walked into an early caucus center to cast a ballot Monday.

“I went from Joe Biden to Bernie to Pete to now maybe Bloomberg,” Forsting said. “I’ve never been so undecided in my life ... and I’ve been voting since 1972.”

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli