But is there reason to believe demographics are destiny for the Vermont senator? Probably less than you think.

The expectation that Sanders will fail to win the support of voters of color is based on two dodgy assumptions: first, that voters’ candidate preferences won’t be influenced by what’s happened in states that have already voted or by reevaluation of candidates’ records as time goes on (for example, this blistering essay by Michelle Alexander on why African American voters should abandon Clinton); second, that racial identity produces stable and homogeneous candidate preferences everywhere.

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Keep in mind that in the run-up to the 2008 primaries, Hillary Clinton consistently outpolled Barack Obama among African American voters, right up until Obama’s surprise victory in Iowa made him seem like a candidate who could actually win.

While it’s hard to believe Sanders can recreate that same dynamic, it’s not crazy to think his win in New Hampshire could make him seem viable to a wider group of primary voters. (At Vox, Matthew Yglesias has already had the same thought.)

It’s a safe bet that Sanders faces a Tough Road Ahead (to pick just one campaign cliché) as the primary contest moves out of New England. It’s also true that he has historically underperformed among non-white voters in polls, and since the Vermont constituency that has kept sending him to Congress since 1991 is also overwhelmingly white, he has never really been tested in a diverse electorate before. But so far, there’s little hard evidence that these things will be meaningfully related once the voting starts in Nevada and then South Carolina.

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Demographic groups in different states do vote differently at times. Take the 2004 Democratic primary, when black voters in South Carolina preferred John Edwards over John Kerry, 37 percent to 34 percent, but black voters in neighboring Georgia backed Kerry, 61 to 25. (Or look at white voters in Iowa on Feb. 1 compared to white voters in New Hampshire on Feb. 9.)

If anything, the New Hampshire results suggest that for Sanders, demographics aren’t destiny. Yes, the New Hampshire primary electorate was essentially all-white, but exit polls showed Sanders swept nearly every segment of the vote, even beating Clinton among female voters — supposedly her most committed demographic — by 11 points. It may be just too early to assume either candidate has any demographic group totally locked down.

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Still, the Sanders campaign spent its first day post-New Hampshire working to connect with African American voters. He met the Rev. Al Sharpton for coffee at Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem on Wednesday. Sharpton has yet to endorse Sanders – or anyone else, for that matter. Meanwhile, the Congressional Black Caucus PAC announced it would endorse Clinton. So it would seem that neither camp is really taking non-white votes for granted. And Clinton’s New Hampshire loss didn’t significantly damage either her standing in the delegate race or the overall formidability of her campaign.