Once heralded as the place where Sen. Marco Rubio would win big and save his campaign, Nevada could well be another major disappointment for the Establishment’s favored candidate.

Nevada had been billed as Rubio’s “firewall.” But Donald Trump has consistently polled between 30 and 45 percent in Nevada and should easily take Tuesday’s caucuses. If Rubio can’t even “win” second place, the Establishment’s last hope could find himself TKO’d from the race for the GOP nomination.

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The Rubio campaign started putting its chips on Nevada’s table as early as May 2015, when Rubio made a campaign stop there and promised Nevadans they would be seeing a lot of him. Back when Trump was still coasting on free media coverage and Sen. Ted Cruz was setting his Iowa strategy into play, Team Rubio was quietly building the infrastructure of a strong ground game in Nevada, and has visited often.

Rubio is also banking on his ties to Nevada to help him to “victory” in the state’s caucus. The Florida senator spent part of his youth in the state, and attended a Mormon church whilst living there.

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Mormons, an important demographic in the Nevada GOP electorate who accounted for 25 percent of the caucus vote in 2012, are also a big part of Rubio’s strategy. His campaign in Nevada is chaired by Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, arguably Nevada’s highest-profile Mormon, and Hutchison is a constant presence at Rubio’s appearances within the state.

But despite his big bet on Nevada, the state’s caucus is shaping up to be another bloody battleground in the war for second place between Rubio and Cruz.

Although Rubio had a significant head start over Cruz in campaigning in Nevada, Cruz has caught up. “We’re hitting our targets,” Matthew Bell, a Cruz field representative, told Yahoo News. Cruz is betting on aggressive phone outreach to galvanize ideological conservatives to support him in the caucus.

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“Rubio has done the most work here, but I think we have the most passion,” Cruz’s Nevada campaign director, Robert Uithoven, told the National Review in December. “The intensity of our supporters is significantly higher.” Cruz has also targeted more rural — and more conservative — parts of Nevada, in which voters are more likely to caucus for a preferred candidate.

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Indeed, while the Rubio campaign has seen mild returns on its Nevada investment — Rubio took 19 percent in the Gravis poll taken between February 14-15, compared to the 11 percent he received in the same poll taken at the end of December 2015 — Cruz has consistently polled better and maintains a small lead.

Cruz led Rubio by 9 points in the December Nevada Gravis poll, and while that lead decreased to four points in the latest poll, Cruz’s standing actually increased by three points. And no matter what, it seems, he will lose badly to Trump.

“Driving around the strip, I saw a giant building that said ‘Trump.’ But I didn’t see any buildings that said ‘Rubio,’” observed Mark Halperin on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”