LAS VEGAS — Nevada is Donald Trump’s to lose.

That, you can take to the bank. But variables that will crystallize the state of the race heading into next week’s Super Tuesday contests — the size of Trump’s expected win and the race for second place between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz — remain wild cards here as Republicans head out to caucus on Tuesday.


Nevada’s caucus electorate is tiny: Campaigns are expecting a turnout of roughly 40,000 — less than a quarter of Iowa’s turnout in a state of about the same size. Its transient population is difficult to track, a problem compounded by the lack of any complete statewide list of 2012 caucus-goers. And its limited track record of caucuses — they began in 2008 — provides little in the way of historical benchmarks.

“I think Trump’s going to win and I would be surprised if he lost, but I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it,” said journalist Jon Ralston, a longtime chronicler of Nevada politics. The rest, he said, is unpredictable. “It’s just all a total crapshoot with this kind of turnout.”

Some surveys in recent weeks, both public and private, have shown Trump’s support surging past 40 percent — and rival campaigns expect the New York billionaire to win on Tuesday despite organizational advantages enjoyed by both Rubio and Cruz, who both built operations here before Trump.

A CNN poll conducted earlier this month gave Trump 45 percent support among likely caucus-goers, way ahead of Rubio at 19 percent and Cruz at 17 percent. Ben Carson was at 7 percent and John Kasich at 5 percent.

“This is the perfect state for Trump,” said one top Nevada conservative. “Being a flashy billionaire with ties to gaming is a positive here.”

Because of that, the real action is in the fight to come in second and limit Trump’s margin of victory.

Cruz has won the support of Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a rising conservative star, and is targeting rural voters, including with a new ad that swipes at Trump on the hot-button issue of federal control of most of Nevada’s lands, which many rural voters and business interests would like to put under state control.

But Cruz’s campaign here may be hobbled by the stubborn resilience of Carson, who has little hope of winning the nomination but is refusing to drop out and whose well-organized Nevada operation could capture a chunk of religious conservative caucus-goers who would otherwise support the Texas senator.

Meanwhile, Rubio has been buoyed by his second-place finish in South Carolina and the suspension of Jeb Bush’s campaign, which is allowing him to consolidate the support of the state’s Republican establishment in the final days of the race. Nevada’s junior senator, Dean Heller, a former Bush backer, endorsed Rubio over the weekend.

Already, his campaign was stocked with aides to Nevada’s popular governor, Brian Sandoval. Rubio’s state director, Jeremy Hughes, managed Sandoval’s 2014 reelection campaign.

The Florida senator, who spent six years in Nevada in his childhood, has also leveraged his brief stint as a Mormon during that period to appeal to members of the church, the state’s most consistent group of Republican voters, who are expected to make up a quarter or more of the caucus electorate.

“The Mormon vote is going to turn out,” said Peter Ernaut, a Republican operative and adviser to Sandoval who switched his support from Bush to Rubio after the former Florida governor dropped out. “It’s a question of whether or not that Mormon vote is diluted by a more populist wave of voters that are driven by the Trump campaign.”

That wave could be significant.

Trump’s operation here has focused in large part on registering new voters — who make up a rich vein in a state where many residents are recent arrivals. It’s a specialty of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who has led voter registration drives for the Koch brothers-backed American for Prosperity and pulled in fellow AFP alumnus Charles Munoz to head up Trump’s operations in the state with help from Tim Williams, a former political director of the Clark County Republicans who joined AFP last year.

There are early signs that those efforts will pay off. More than 5,200 new Republicans registered in the last two weeks before the deadline for caucus eligibility – half of them in the last two days – according to Jack St. Martin, the president of Engage Nevada, a conservative voter registration group, who described the surge as unusual.

“It’s a genuine factor that has to be considered,” said Republican National Committeewoman Diana Orrock, a Trump supporter, of the new Republicans added to the rolls.

Both Cruz and Rubio were building campaigns here long before Trump, who only hired Munoz as his state director in August. And both are powered by the organizations of the Nevada Republican heavyweights who serve as their state chairman: Laxalt, in Cruz’s case, and Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, in Rubio’s.

Nevada Republicans view the contest between the two senators here as a proxy war between Hutchison and Laxalt, who are both vying to succeed the term-limited Sandoval as governor.

Whichever senator edges the other for second place will be able to sell himself as the strongest challenger to Trump heading into next week’s Super Tuesday contests.

And whoever ends up with that consolation prize will still be faced with the unlucky task of finding a way to beat Trump outright.

“People in general are kind of fed up with business as usual,” said Orrock. “That’s one thing that gives Donald Trump the edge not only here, but nationally.”