Nevada Democrats are caucusing this afternoon in a state where Hillary Clinton has built up a stronger organization but Bernie Sanders is perceived to have growing momentum. After the lopsided New Hampshire primary results, Clinton probably needs a strong finish in Nevada more than Sanders does before the Democratic race moves to South Carolina on February 27 and more than a dozen contests happen during the first week of March.

Results among Latino caucus-goers will be particularly scrutinized today. Some national polling suggests Sanders has nearly closed the gap with Clinton among Latinos since the Iowa caucuses. Paul Lewis and Maria L La Ganga reported for The Guardian on “why Latinos in Nevada are switching to Bernie Sanders.” NBC’s Victoria Defrancesco Soto covered some facts about the Latino population in Nevada. Buzzfeed’s Adrian Carrasquillo noted the key opening for Sanders: “49% of Hispanics in Nevada [are] between 18-35 years old.” I enclose below excerpts from those pieces, but encourage you to click through and read the originals.

I will update this post as needed with Nevada results. For those who put stock in entrance polls (I don’t), CBS News says Clinton has a slight lead, and Jon Ralston explains why the demographics may favor Clinton. Turnout seems to be high, with long lines outside some caucus sites and at some locations on the Las Vegas strip designed to help casino workers participate. Some shift workers gave up waiting, concerned about getting docked if they were late to return to work.

Any comments about the Democratic presidential race are welcome in this thread; I’ll put up a separate thread later for talking about the South Carolina Republican primary.

UPDATE: Clinton won by approximately a 5-point margin, thanks to her strength in Clark County. Many cross-tabs from entrance polling are here. But beware: Although entrance polling suggested that Sanders was winning Latino voters, the results from precincts with a large Latino population tell a different story. Clinton appears to have maintained her strong advantage with African-American voters, which is a good sign for her going into next weekend’s contest in South Carolina.

Turnout seems to have dropped more sharply in Nevada than in Iowa. The 2008 Nevada caucus turnout was around 120,000, and early projections suggest approximately 80,000 participated today. Some 239,000 Iowans participated in the 2008 caucuses, compared to about 171,000 this year.

CBS has posted results here and exit poll data here.

From the article by Paul Lewis and Maria L La Ganga for The Guardian on “why Latinos in Nevada are switching to Bernie Sanders.”

Nevada was supposed to be the first brick in Clinton’s supposed “firewall” of support in states that are far more ethnically diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire, the overwhelmingly white states where Sanders first put up a strong challenge to Clinton and then forced her into a resounding defeat.

Clinton beat Barack Obama in the popular vote in Nevada in 2008, in a victory that relied on her support among Latinos, who now comprise 28% of the state’s population and affectionately refer to her as “La Hillary”.

She still maintains the backing of Nevada’s older, democratic establishment, including a string of prominent Latino figures. Yet look beyond the endorsements from prominent figures, such as civil rights leaders Astrid Silva and Dolores Huerta and actor Eva Longoria, and the Latino community’s alliances begins to fray.

The same is true for unions in Nevada, which also tend to be heavily Latino and, in a service-sector dominated state, have historically been kingmakers in Democratic elections.

While labor leaders back Clinton, low-wage workers and indebted students are being drawn to the message of radical economic change propagated by the 74-year-old senator from Vermont who some are calling “El Viejito” (the little old man). […]

For weeks, Clinton allies were bullish about their prospects in diverse Nevada, where a further 18% of the population are either African American or Asian.

But in recent days, Clinton campaign officials have been playing down their candidate’s prospects; campaign manager Robby Mook, the architect of Clinton’s Nevada victory in 2008, and Brian Fallon, the campaign spokesman, both caused eyebrows to raise when they suggested the state was “80% white”.

From Victoria Defrancesco Soto’s article for NBC: “The Caucus is Coming: Here Are Some Facts About Nevada’s Latinos.”

The Silver state is just a few percentage points shy of becoming a majority-minority state and has one of the largest Latino shares of the state population making up 28 [percent] of the population. […]

By the 2008 election the Nevada Latino electorate had started to make its mark at 15 percent of Nevada’s voters. And in the last eight years there has been an increase of 70 percent in the Latino eligible voter electorate – they now make up about 17 percent of the prospective voters. And with the high number of millennials the electoral footprint of the community will not be slowing down anytime soon. […]

Nevada is not a border state, but immigration is very much on the mind of the state’s Latinos. Nearly three-quarters of the state’s Latino population is made up of persons of Mexican descent, the Latino origin group most affected by immigration policy.

From Adrian Carrasquillo’s article for Buzzfeed: “Bernie’s Test: Can He Add Nevada’s Young Latinos To His Coalition And Win?”

Free tuition, a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, demilitarizing the police force, not shooting unarmed people — these are the reasons young minority voters are into Sanders, Lozier, whose brother works for Sanders in Austin, Texas, said. […]
This kind of enthusiasm among young people has powered Sanders to 84% of voters 17-to-29 in Iowa and 83% in New Hampshire, two mostly white states. For a campaign looking to establish itself as a serious threat to win the Democratic nomination, minority voters were always going to the necessary next step, and Nevada — and its large Latino population — serves as its first challenge.

These voters have repeatedly been described as a “firewall” for Clinton, but a January Pew report offered an important opening for Sanders: 44% of Hispanics across the country are millennials, defined as those who are 18-to-35 years old. In Nevada, the number is half of all Latinos. UNLV’s campus is 55% nonwhite.

But while it’s easy to make parallels between Barack Obama’s successful 2008 campaign against Clinton and Sanders’s insurgent 2016 go, Obama didn’t have to rely solely on youth turnout to beat her. Once Obama was viable, he was able to count on black support across all ages. Sanders path to victory is narrower: He will have to turn out young people, including minorities, to win. […]

Latinos nationally routinely list the economy and education as issues more important to them than immigration, but Nevada’s Hispanic community is unique. According to Pew Hispanic, 7.6% of the Nevadan population is undocumented, the highest rate in the nation. The state has highest share of undocumented immigrants in its labor force — 10.2%.

That means that Nevada also has something else important: One of the highest rates of mixed-status families. A young voter might be a U.S. citizen, for example, with an undocumented parent and a sibling benefitting from Obama’s DACA program, which allowed them to remain in the country and obtain work authorization for two years. Immigration policy matters in Nevada: Of those who are undocumented in the state, 52% would be eligible for Obama’s programs, according to Pew.