Who Will Win Nevada's Democratic Caucuses? There's No Sure Bet

After several days of attending rallies by the leading Democratic candidates in Nevada, interviewing numerous likely voters, campaign staffers, union members, party officials and others, I finally heard a rational voice on Friday night give an assessment of what will make the difference in the Silver State's historic caucuses on Saturday, Jan. 19.

"More than 80 percent of the elections in the U.S. are won by less than 5 percent of the vote. And a well-run field operation (turning out voters) can swing the election by 3 to 8 percent," said Dino Martino, the political director of the Service Employees International Union Local 1 in Chicago, as he began a training session for precinct captains at his union's Las Vegas office. "We are the factor they do not have in the polls."

Indeed, as Martino and Morgan Levi, the political director of the city's SEIU Local 1107, told a full classroom of union members who will work on behalf of nominating Barack Obama, the most anyone can definitively say on the eve of the nation's third nominating contest for Democrats is that voter turnout will be unprecedented -- and that means the best organized campaign is the one most likely to win.

"The reality of this election is we will have historic turnout," he said. "There are all kinds of predictions that are way above the 10,000 people who caucused in 2004. That throws those polls out the windows. Out job is to get those new voters out and into our group."

Nevada's Democratic nominating contest is a blank political slate in a presidential year that has so far defied predictions. This libertarian-spirited Western state is determined to have its say, in its own way, as much as ponderous Iowa and finicky New Hampshire. Indeed, for every prediction made by pundits about momentum, mistakes and trends, there seemed to be exceptions everywhere.

The state's largest and arguably most powerful union, the Culinary Workers Local 226, with 60,000 members, was backing Obama. The Democratic Party beat a legal effort to prevent new, at-large caucuses from being held in nine casinos, an effort to bring minority voters into the nominating process. But at least half of the casino employees I interviewed were not even sure they were going to caucus. One waiter said he would wait until November to vote. A card dealer said Saturday was going to be a big day for tips, because of the NFL's AFC championship game between the Patriots and Chargers.

In other words, because the caucus process takes time and more commitment than marking a ballot, and because it will be a new experience for many participants, it is not a sure bet that the special casino precincts will be as decisive as the Clinton campaign fears and as the Obama campaign hopes.

There were other examples that ran counter to the high-profile assumptions. One of the most telling is that not all union members will be following their leaders' endorsement of specific candidates. On Friday morning, John Edwards spoke at a parking lot rally at his Las Vegas headquarters and urged union members to disregard endorsements and back him, saying he would be the strongest defender of organized labor.

"Regardless of who your political leadership chose to endorse, no one will fight for you in the trenches like I will," Edwards said at the 9 a.m. rally, where perhaps 200 mostly white people attended, and where the warm-up music included classic rock with lines such as "That's what I like about you" and "You ain't seen nothing yet."

Edwards' remarks underscore that Obama is backed by two of the state's most powerful unions, the Culinary Workers and the Service Employees Industrial Union, which has 17,500 Nevada members. But as Edwards supporters waited for him to speak, I went looking for people wearing "precinct captain" buttons and found two women who were top SEIU officials.