For Bernie Sanders, who took a drubbing from African-American voters in Nevada Saturday, it only gets worse from here.
On the heels of losing the black vote by a blowout margin of 76 percent to 22 percent, according to entrance polls, the Vermont senator now must look ahead to South Carolina next Saturday, where African-Americans will cast a dramatically larger share of the vote than in Nevada.
In the first-in-the-West caucuses, African-Americans cast just 13 percent of the vote. In the upcoming first-in-the-South primary, they’re expected to cast nearly 60 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Then, several days later, comes a burst of Super Tuesday primaries where Sanders must run in nine states with higher black populations than Nevada.
Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, laid out Sanders' quandary in direct terms.
"This is Bernie Sanders' problem: If you cannot compete for the black vote, you cannot be the Democratic nominee for president," Belcher said. “If Bernie Sanders can crack her black wall in South Carolina, it is real problematic for her moving forward because right now he's competing very strong for white progressive voters and certainly dominating certain segments of the electorate."
South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison said if Sanders expects to be competitive in the South, he will need to capture far more than roughly 20 percent of the black vote.
"He's gonna need more than that in order to win the Democratic nomination. When you're going into states like Georgia and North Carolina and Louisiana and Mississippi that have a significant African American population which will make up a large component if not the majority of the Democratic primary in those states you need to be able to win significantly enough so that you can pull out a victory in those states," Harrison said. "It's equally important for him and her in order to show his viability in the African American community --he needs to garner significant African American votes so he can win a state like South Carolina."
In South Carolina, where Clinton leads Sanders by more than 20 percentage points in recent polls, Democrats on both sides of the presidential contest don't expect Sanders to win the primary – or even a decisive majority of black voters. But the hope for Sanders' campaign and his supporters is to capture a respectable chunk, something to show he’s making inroads.
"I've said before. I think 35 or higher from where we started here, which pretty much was at zero, would be huge for us," Chris Covert, Sanders' South Carolina state director, said. "We don't have to win 50 percent or 51 percent of the African American vote. Being somewhere between 35 or 40 would be a great move for us considering we started out with nothing."
That's not to say, Covert stressed, that more of the vote wouldn't be better for the campaign.
"Obviously well over 50 would be great, but from a realistic standpoint because of the amount of time that we have from where we started which was at nothing, to being at the mid -30s or close to 40. That says a lot not just about South Carolina, but also nationally where the race is going. I think especially with young people they're kind of seeing how he has a plan for this country," Covert said.
In his efforts to build support, Sanders has made sure to do campaign stops at historically black colleges and to deploy his top African-American surrogates out on the campaign trail. He’s also shaped his speeches in the region to win over black voters. At a Morehouse College stop in Georgia last week Sanders said "after my first term as president we will not have more people in jail than any other country" and noted that one of his top three issues would be fixing "a broken criminal justice system tied to institutional racism."
"We ain't nobody's firewall! You gotta earn our vote!" former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner said during the Morehouse appearance, addressing the perception that Hillary Clinton has locked down the black vote.
Both neutral Democrats and Clinton campaign observers concede that Sanders is making some progress among black voters in South Carolina, but contend that it's not enough to cut the deep roots the Clinton name has among black voters in the state.
"I wouldn't be honest with you if I didn't say Bernie Sanders isn't making some inroads buoyed by the bounce of New Hampshire and Iowa. Having said that, Hillary's support in the black community is strong because she has developed a long term relationship with black voters that spans over decades," South Carolina state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, a Clinton supporter, said. "Senator Sanders is relatively new and so faces a larger challenge, particularly since he comes from a state where there's less than 2 percent of an African American population. In this narrow window it will be very difficult for him to close the gap."
"It's a wall," said Rick Wade, President Barack Obama's 2008 African American outreach director, correcting himself after first saying Clinton had a "firewall" of African American support. "And I'm confident that she will win South Carolina, The question is by what margin."
The Clinton campaign is determined not to give Sanders the opportunity to gain ground. Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond, a Clinton surrogate, offered a sharp critique of Sanders' college plan during the senator’s tour of black colleges in the South. In late January, the Clinton campaign had prominent surrogates like Ohio Congresswoman Marcia Fudge and former Bill Clinton administration Labor Secretary Alexis Herman making stops at churches and black sororities.
Fudge and a handful of other prominent African-American members of Congress also made stops at black churches across South Carolina in support of Clinton. During the Feb. 11 debate, Clinton herself very conspicuously name-checked South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn's proposal on fighting poverty in poor communities around the state; the influential South Carolina Democrat officially endorsed her late last week.
"They've been pulling out all the stops. The Congressional Black Caucus endorsement was big, getting them to go stump, bringing out black Hollywood. She's had a number of African American celebrities," Harrison said. "I think all of that is helpful."
Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report.