Is Mitt Romney the Nevada front-runner? Yes, but . . .

The expectation is that Mitt Romney will win Saturday's Nevada caucuses handily. But where there are high expectations, can disappointment be far behind?

Mitt Romney is the heavy favorite to win Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, in case you hadn’t noticed. The most recent Bling State – excuse me, Silver State – polls have Mr. Romney far ahead.

A Public Policy Polling survey released Friday has Newt Gingrich eating Romney’s desert dust, for example. Romney gets the nod of 50 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers, according to PPP. Mr. Gingrich comes in second at only 25 percent. Ron Paul is third at 15 percent and Rick Santorum fourth at 8 percent.

“The bad news for Gingrich isn’t just that he’s headed for a distant second-place finish. Nevada Republicans actively dislike him, with only 41 percent holding a favorable opinion of him to 49 percent with a negative one,” writes PPP analyst Tom Jenson. “That’s an indication that GOP voters might be starting to sour on him again, sending his numbers back to pre-South Carolina levels.”

It doesn’t look good for the former speaker, does it? New York Times polling analyst Nate Silver puts the chances of Romney winning Nevada at 100 percent.

But there are several caveats we should mention. There haven’t been many recent statewide polls of Nevada, so the data sample here is small. Plus, the vote in caucus states is notoriously hard to predict. Who will show up? Who will stick around if the speeches are boring? Who will bolt for home when the nachos run out?

Slate political blogger David Weigel points out that in 2008, final polls predicted that Mr. Paul would finish fourth with 7.3 percent of the vote. He actually finished second with 13.7 percent of the vote. Clearly Paul voters are hardened against lack of snacks.

Should Romney be worried? Well, not really. But now that he’s supposed to win a blowout, reporters might treat anything less as slippage. You know how devious we journalists are – always playing an expectations game with rules we control by ourselves.

“If this winds up being at all close, [Romney] may have some explaining to do,” writes the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake Friday on the paper’s political blog The Fix.

The biggest danger for Gingrich is that he won’t even finish second. A third or even fourth-place showing might make it much tougher for Newt to slog through until Southern states vote in March’s Super Tuesday. Rick Santorum is going all-in to try and displace Gingrich as the anti-Romney in Nevada. He’s released a brutal radio ad, for instance, that mocks Gingrich’s proposed US colony on the moon.

“Gingrich’s idea is fiscal insanity, and another reason why true conservatives are uniting around Rick Santorum,” says the radio spot.

Then there is Paul. Nevada is a test case of the libertarian’s caucus-first strategy, in which he focuses on states where organization and enthusiasm count for a lot. Nevada’s 28 delegates will be allocated proportionally and the caucus results are binding, so if Paul supporters can stack the house in a few counties their guy could do better than expected.

Paul’s made a play for the Nevada vote by releasing a state-specific economic plan that among other things proposes that tip income be tax-free. That might play well in a state where (according to the Paul campaign) 20 percent of workers have jobs that involve tip money.