Five questions that will decide Nevada: Jon Ralston

Nevada will decide Saturday whether Hillary Clinton’s campaign moves from intense fretting to full-blown panic or whether the Bernie Sanders surge goes from real to evanescent.

Clinton should win because of the diverse electorate that her apparently color-blind staff can’t see. But the Sanders momentum has moved Nevada from a can’t-miss to a could-kill state for Clinton.

What determines the outcome?

The answers to these five questions will decide the race, all related to the vapid cliché of clichés about elections: It all comes down to turnout.

How big will the turnout be?

Eight years ago, when Nevada took its first at-bat in the early state series, Democrats set a record with nearly 120,000 caucus-goers. I had scoffed at Harry Reid when he predicted six figures; he scoffed back when he was right.

But even that number was only about a quarter of registered Democrats in Nevada and the higher turnout was at least partly driven by the potent Culinary union pushing its workers to caucus for Barack Obama. The competition with Hillary Clinton, which sparked accusations and lawsuits, was intense and nasty.

Ralston Reports: 5 questions that will decide Clinton-Sanders outcome in Nevada

This year’s suddenly developing battle between Sanders and Clinton has reached that level of vitriol, but the Vermont senator’s campaign does not have the organizational strength that Obama’s team had. And this cycle, the Culinary has stayed out of the fray and likely will do only perfunctory encouragement of its workforce to caucus on Saturday.

Most folks I trust on the ground don’t expect turnout to reach six figures again — one insider estimated 70,000 voters. The lower it is, the better for Clinton.

How many new caucus-goers will feel the Bern?

If the caucus were just about the current universe of voters, it would be easier to predict and would lean even more toward Clinton. But that is not how it works as the Democrats allow same-day registration.

Thirty thousand new voters registered on Caucus Day in 2008. No one expects it to get that high Saturday, but that uncertainty is what makes polling so difficult and nervousness so prevalent in Clintonland.

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Both campaigns are now calling independents and telling them they can switch to the Democratic Party on Saturday and participate. But how many will do so? And how many Republicans — Sanders is calling a lot of them — will become Democrats for a day just to try to skew the results?

Have I mentioned why primaries are better than caucuses? Have I mentioned that this kind of nonsense is why Nevada may lose its early-state status.

Can the Hillary machine douse the Bern?

The analogies between Sanders and Donald Trump are already hackneyed. But here’s one important truth: Both candidates have shown that enthusiasm can overcome organization.

The Clinton machine in 2008, led by her now-national campaign manager Robby Mook, was so skillful that it managed to overcome the senator of hope and change. Can Mook & Co., including some superb operatives left over from the ’08 battles, replicate that with Sanders?

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You can sense from the amazing number of events Clinton did in Nevada and the flood of high-profile surrogates she has brought to Nevada the last few days — Sens. Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, to name two — that they are placing sandbags to prevent the Sanders wave from washing away their advantage. If it’s not desperation, it’s frustration, fueled by determination.

The tide has turned; this Team Clinton knows. Their goal is to stop it from becoming a tsunami by Saturday.

How white is the turnout?

If the turnout is, as the silly Team Clinton spin asserted, 80% white, she will lose. But the real issue is: Whose fault will that be?

The 2008 caucus electorate was 65% or so minority; the 2016 Democratic electorate could be higher. But whose responsibility is it to drive it up?

If indeed the Clinton machine is as sophisticated and multifaceted as I think it is, she can do it. But if she loses Nevada because — horror of horrors — the caucus voters looked more like New Hampshire and Iowa, Clinton will have to look in the mirror. Or at her field operatives.

What happens in the final days?

Thursday’s nationally televised town hall could have an impact and almost certainly will help drive up turnout. Both candidates are spending on TV to do the same — Clinton has a $1.5 million buy this week and Sanders is at $1 million, as of Tuesday, according to a source who tracks media buys.

We will know by what the campaigns are doing from now until Saturday just how much trouble Clinton thinks she is in or how close Sanders thinks he is to scoring an upset that would change the complexion of the contest. You can feel the intensity ratcheting up, if only by the incessant social media whining and conspiracy theory proffering by both sides. Never have so many become so unhinged over such nonsense.

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Clinton has much more to lose here than Sanders.

As one Democratic insider put it, “If your argument is electability and you are losing state after state …” Indeed.

Much of this will be determined, of course, by how the media plays the result. In the crazy way we elect presidents, especially in the early going, the narrative is more important than the delegate count.

If Clinton wins, she reverses Sanders’ momentum and probably defeats him in South Carolina. But she was expected to win here since last spring and only recently began to see her lock getting picked.

If Sanders wins, though, he will have won two states in a row and may cause a ripple effect into South Carolina. And he will have sent a clear message that if he can win here, he can win anywhere.

Whatever happens Saturday, Nevada will have provided a key pivot point in the contest.

Jon Ralston, who has covered Nevada politics for more than a quarter-century, blogs at RalstonReports.com and hosts the statewide daily PBS show Ralston Live. This column first appeared in the Reno Gazette-Journal.

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