With Super Tuesday less than a week away, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders' fight to secure the Latino vote is only growing more intense.

The Hill reports Clinton supporters are hoping her strong showing in Nevada among Latinos will be followed by rising voter totals in heavily Hispanic states. They are looking ahead to states like Texas, Colorado and Virginia where polls open on March 1.

But with the stakes as high as they are, team Sanders isn't about to concede the Latino vote. The Vermont senator's supporters have refuted Clinton staffers' appraisal of her performance among that critical voting bloc in Nevada.

"What we learned today is that Hillary Clinton's firewall with Latino voters is a myth," said Arturo Carmona, the deputy political director for the Sanders campaign, which still insists Sanders topped the former secretary of state among Latino voters in the state. "The Latino community responded strongly to Bernie Sanders' message of immigration reform and creating an economy that works for all families."

Both Staffs Turn to Their Attention to Latino Voters

Neither candidate disputes that the race in Nevada came down to the wire among Latinos, and several Super Tuesday races figure to end up the same way.

While Sanders' staffers have fully committed to a plan of attracting more Latinos, University of Nevada-Reno political science professor Eric Herzik hinted he's convinced that may be easier said than done.

"She won among Latinos," he said of Clinton, adding that she was also better organized on the ground and her message was "far clearer and much better focused than Sanders."

On the issue of immigration reform, Herzik added Clinton has been effective in conveying the message "I can get it done. I will do this."

Clinton Snags Key Latino Support

In addition, Clinton has secured the endorsement of Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), a Congressional Hispanic Caucus member and past backer of Barack Obama. He has previously ripped Sanders' record on immigration reform as "troubling." In a column he penned for Univision, Gutiérrez also chastised the candidate for breaking with Democrats in 2006 and aligning with "the hard-line anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party."

The Clinton campaign recently dispatched former President Bill Clinton to Texas and Colorado to further advance his wife's agenda.

"We need to stop talking about sending 11 million immigrants home," he said. "We need to stop talking about throwing these Dreamers out of college. If you really sent all these people home and built a wall, it would have the dual benefit of collapsing the economy and making everyone in Latin America furious. That doesn't seem to me like a really good strategy in an interdependent world where we need to grow the economy and we need more partners and fewer enemies."

In Texas, Latinos now comprise roughly one-fourth of the electorate, and that voting bloc is expected to make all the difference in 2016. Back in 2008, the former first lady used a primary victory in the state to recharge her campaign after 11 straight losses to Obama that caused her husband to deem the contest a "must-win" for his wife.

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