The Democratic presidential caucuses in Nevada were supposed to be an afterthought: lost in the shadows of high-profile battles in Iowa and New Hampshire, and fought in a state far off in the West where voters have a long, warm history with Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Instead, after Mrs. Clinton’s overwhelming defeat in New Hampshire by Senator Bernie Sanders on Tuesday, eight days after she barely won the Iowa caucuses, Nevada is looming as a turning point in their increasingly competitive contest, offering critical tests of the two candidates’ strengths.
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“A month ago, who would have thought this would be such a competitive race?” said Rebecca Lambe, the senior strategist for Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the minority leader. “Nevada will either be a potential firewall or a potential tiebreaker.”
“It really is the first test there is of how effective you are going to be in mobilizing the Democratic coalition in a general election,” she said.
Mr. Sanders’s senior adviser, Tad Devine, said Monday that campaign workers from Iowa, where Mr. Sanders nearly tied Mrs. Clinton, were being flown into Nevada to beef up a 90-person operation already in place. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers declined to disclose the size of their paid staff here. Mr. Sanders began advertising here in early December; Mrs. Clinton began in early January.
“It has become more competitive,” Mr. Devine said. Nevada, he added, presents a “fair test” of Mr. Sanders’s potential national appeal. “Now we are moving into a different region in the country, a much more diverse group of voters.”