“Super Tuesday is typically a wild scramble, and anybody who’s still surviving is usually limping a little bit in terms of money. They’re spread thin in terms of where to go,” said Doug Herman, a Democratic strategist. “Campaigns can’t pay to have simultaneous overhead in all of the early states and all of the next round of states with quality people. So they put all of their best people in early states and then cut and paste them into the next states.”

For later states, said Matt Bennett, a veteran of the 2004 presidential campaign and a co-founder of the center-left group Third Way, “The strategy is wait and pray. There is no other strategy … I just think you basically ignore it, and then they’ll frantically run around in those states for a week.”

While smaller than California, Texas and other states voting on March 3, the following two weeks of primaries will test candidates’ geographical reach and ability to campaign in large, diverse states, including some general election bellwethers.

The March 10 primaries include not only Michigan and Washington, but also Mississippi and Missouri. Florida, Illinois and Ohio come one week later, on March 17, when more than 500 delegates are at stake.

Adding to the complexity of the primary map is that early voting practices are creating a dynamic that, in some states, is supplanting election day with an election month.

“It’s not as clean as just saying, ‘These are the March 3 states, these are the March 10 states, these are the March 17 states,” said Pete Kavanaugh, former Vice President Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager for states.

He added that “based on the calendar and the delegate math, it's entirely possible that this stretches throughout the spring."

David Pepper, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, predicted his state will “loom large, depending on how things shake out,” but that even in a contested election, “it generally develops late.” Four years ago, Hillary Clinton used a drubbing of Sanders in Florida and Ohio to pull away from the Vermont senator in the delegate race after Sanders’ stunning victory in Michigan the previous week.

If multiple candidates are still competing in mid-March this year, Pepper said Ohio “could play a tiebreaker role.”

Democratic strategists in Florida and Illinois express similar optimism, and the money that candidates raised last quarter suggests that any number of Democrats may remain competitive by the time the campaign reaches their states. Six Democrats raised more than $10 million in the fourth quarter of last year, including four candidates — Sanders, Biden, Warren and Pete Buttigieg — who each raised more than $20 million.

But even with that money, the imperative to spend heavily in early states is already spreading candidates thin. Multiple campaigns are relying heavily on volunteer efforts in later-voting states, sometimes with staffers from headquarters overseeing efforts in multiple states.

Barry Goodman, a Biden bundler in Michigan, said the campaigns’ infrastructure is not yet developed sufficiently even to take advantage of would-be donors or volunteers in late March states.

In addition to holding “a list of people who want to work for [Biden] in Michigan,” Goodman said that for the sake of fundraising, “I need him to be in town. It’s hard to raise money … unless he shows up, or unless a strong surrogate shows up.”

Doug Ballard, a DNC member from Arizona, which votes on March 17, said that except for Warren, he hasn’t noticed any significant organizing efforts in his state.

“We’re just too far down the line, I guess,” he said.

Jill Alper, a Michigan-based Democratic strategist and veteran of multiple presidential campaigns, said that “with so many candidates in both different and overlapping lanes who will be financed potentially longer, it probably does mean many of them will make their way through the calendar into the post-Super Tuesday states.”

Alper said that with digital advances in campaigning, “there are other ways than bricks and mortar to connect and excite and organize people.”

Christopher Cadelago contributed to this report.

