(CNN) With the Iowa caucuses a week from Monday, Elizabeth Warren's campaign is zooming out -- playing down the importance of the early states and projecting a long primary that could stretch deep into the spring.

In a memo released Friday, Warren campaign manager Roger Lau touts the organization's robust nationwide staff and charts a path to winning the nearly 2,000 delegates needed to secure the nomination. But he also downplays the first round of contests, beginning next week in Iowa.

"We expect this to be a long nomination fight and have built our campaign to sustain well past Super Tuesday and stay resilient no matter what breathless media narratives come when voting begins," Lau writes.

Warren remains in the top tier of candidates in Iowa 10 days out from the caucuses, where most polls show the Massachusetts senator in a tight, four-way race with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg. But Warren's numbers, in the early states and nationally, have mostly stalled since her summer surge. Perhaps more troubling for the campaign is a new poll, released on Thursday by Boston-based WBUR, which showed Sanders, at 29%, leading in New Hampshire with more than double the support of Warren, who registered only 13%. Both Sanders and Warren represent neighboring states and would take defeat there harder than Biden or Buttigieg.

Lau's memo seeks to downplay those "narrative" angles and shift the focus off of the states voting in February and onto Super Tuesday and beyond. It features graphics that underline -- literally -- the percentage of total delegates on offer in four groups of contests. The "Early States," it reminds voters, make up only 3.9% of the full slate.

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