Nevada enters the US presidential campaign with Democratic front-runners courting the valuable Hispanic vote.
The state best known for the gambling haven Las Vegas holds its caucuses tomorrow, with senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama keen to claim the initiative heading into the crucial South Carolina battle seven days later.
Nevada has held presidential caucuses in past years, but they were small, insignificant affairs that never drew more than 9,000 voters.
This year's contest is expected to see as many as 45,000 Democrats participate, and the caucuses have taken on extra significance following Mrs Clinton's comeback victory in New Hampshire.
Nevada is the first test of the candidates' appeal in a region featuring a diverse population with an urban centre, Las Vegas, following the contests in the overwhelmingly white, rural Iowa and New Hampshire.
The nation's fastest growing state for the past 20 years now has more than 2.5 million people, two million of whom live in the Vegas region.
A quarter of Nevadans are Hispanic, so Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama are airing radio ads in Spanish.
Hispanics could potentially loom large in Nevada because they constitute a significant chunk of the electorate (12%) in a state where President George W Bush's margin of victory in 2004 was less than 5%.
Nevada is also a heavily unionized state, which is why the announcement by the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union that it was supporting Mr Obama was a major coup.
The candidate also earned the endorsement of the parent union, UNITE HERE, which has 450,000 members nationwide.
Both are seen as significant boosts to Mr Obama's get-out-the-vote efforts, and the Nevada branch of the union got to work quickly passing out fliers to its members promoting Mr Obama.
Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton clashed in the past week over a plan to allow voting in casino hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, approved by a federal judge on Thursday, and over Mrs Clinton's comments on race that were seen by some as a slight on civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
The Nevada Republican Party is also holding caucuses that day, but the leading Republican candidates have largely ignored Nevada, however Mitt Romney did spend all day yesterday and some part of today campaigning.
