In 2008, in a strategic blunder that reflected a combination of miscalculation and complacency, Hillary Clinton effectively conceded the nation's caucus states to Barack Obama. This year, Clinton cast the tragic hero of that failure in a starring role: campaign manager Robby Mook oversaw her 2008 campaign in Nevada, the only caucus state where Clinton won more votes than Obama, even though he cleared more delegates. A very narrow victory in Iowa reassured Clinton's team that it can compete in the logistically demanding contests where liberal activists usually hold sway. Ever since, state-campaigns director Marlon Marshall—who had served under Mook as Nevada field director in 2008—has been choreographing a diaspora of Iowa staff with a particular eye to the unique value of caucus expertise; all of her regional field directors in the first caucus states have been dispatched to the others that will follow. Even if an operation led by Mook and Marshall will not be blindsided at a caucus, do they have the assets to win one?

The caucuses that follow Nevada's on Saturday are shaping up as a battleground for the Democratic nominating campaign's most asymmetrical conflict. The 13 caucus states, along with Guam and the Virgin Islands, represent a total of 488 pledged delegates, more than California has on offer in its June primary. Clinton and her opponent, Bernie Sanders, have devoted the most attention to Colorado and Minnesota—which will both vote on March 1 and where both candidates spoke at state-party dinners in consecutive nights last weekend—but it is the caucus scramble beyond them that will represent the greatest challenge. "There's more competition for a campaign like ours, because they'll have a lot of the vote identified and ready to deliver," says Tad Devine, Sanders's chief strategist.

As Clinton learned in Nevada eight years ago, however, votes do not always linearly convert to delegates. In fact, caucuses make a particular mockery of the one-man-one-vote standard, with an individual's ballot worth exponentially more on one side of a county line or legislative-district border than the other. With votes grounded more strongly in place than they are in primaries, it is often not possible to make up for a weak showing in one area by overperforming in another. "In a primary you go find your votes wherever they are and turn them out," says Stephanie Schriock, the president of EMILY's List, a women's group that has endorsed Clinton. "Caucuses you have to absolutely play in every precinct, whether it is a strong precinct for you or not."

"Ultimately this is a hunt for delegates."

Tad Devine

Sanders has opened offices in Nebraska, Maine, and Kansas, which all vote on March 5, and is likely to reassign Nevada staffers to other western states with caucuses later in the month. "We'll have an idea of where we want to go in with a lot of people and where we want to do it another way," says Devine. "Winning some states is going to be important, showing some geographical prowess is important, but ultimately this is a hunt for delegates."