Democratic candidates face most diverse electorate so far in Nevada caucuses - CNN

While polling is notoriously difficult in Nevada, Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden have been jockeying for the lead in the Silver State for months now, with Sanders rising after his team built deep organizing roots in the state -- particularly within the Latino community -- some eight months ago.

Sanders projected the confidence of a front-runner Friday by steering his campaign toward the upcoming Super Tuesday contests of California and Texas, holding a midday rally in Santa Ana, California, Friday before a full slate of events in Texas Saturday.

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Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren campaigned hard in Nevada, seeking a last-minute surge after she led the charge against former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in Wednesday night's Las Vegas debate. (Bloomberg is not competing in the state).

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Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar are hoping the momentum they've built over the first two contests will continue in Nevada. And businessman Tom Steyer has spent a cool $14.8 million in the Silver State, far outpacing Sanders, who was a distant second in spending at nearly $2 million.

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Biden, who delivered disappointing finishes in the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, told CNN in an interview on Friday that he would consider a first or second place finish in Nevada to be a win.

"Who knows how the caucuses are going to go in terms of mechanics of the caucus," Biden said Friday. "It's hard to do and so a lot is going to depend on how much control (there) is over the caucus and whether or not the ballots get to the right places."

Uncertainty about the caucus process has cast a shadow over the candidates themselves this week. Democrats in the Silver State showed their enthusiasm in early voting when nearly 75,000 people participated over four days, nearing the 2016 Caucus Day turnout of 84,000 (when there was no early vote). And the party estimated that more than 50% of the early vote participants were first-time caucusgoers.

But national party leaders are striving to avoid the kind of caucus counting disaster that befell Iowa.

In the lead up to voting, the Nevada State Democratic Party offered "round the clock" caucus trainings to show volunteers how to work the special caucus calculator that precinct chairs will use to enter results. The Democratic National Committee also sent in a team of aides this week to avoid the embarrassment that unfolded in the Hawkeye State.

State party officials are asking caucus site leaders to sign non-disclosure agreements that would bar them from speaking to the media. A state party official told CNN that the request was standard and said staff and volunteers were asked to sign the agreements because they would have access to strategic information.

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After abandoning plans to use the same faulty app that was used in Iowa, the Nevada Democratic Party has also worked hard to create low-tech reporting systems to transmit results.

"No Iowa repeat," Jon Summers, a senior adviser to the Democratic Party, said during an interview with CNN Friday. "The party has been working around the clock to make sure they get everything right, to build in redundancies in the system. They've gone from what was going to be a very, very high-tech operation for the caucuses to one that's very low tech now -- that's paper-based and based on phones."

"They're going to have phone lines manned by about 200 people who will be accepting calls from the precincts when it's time for them to report the results," said Summers, the former communications director to then-Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid.

But some volunteers involved in the caucus process have expressed frustration about the party's trainings and angst about Saturday's proceedings, including whether there will be enough translators at each site to handle the possible influx of non-English speakers.

Chris Erbe, who will be a precinct chair Saturday, described the final day of training to CNN Friday as a "complete waste of time."

"The training on the iPads was awful. Tiny little screenshots projected way too small to read," Erbe told CNN. "No accompanying handouts so you could actually see what was being projected and no hands-on time with the iPads."

CNN's Kevin Conlon, Arlette Saenz, Jeff Simon, David Wright and Vanessa Yurkevich contributed to this report.

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