Bernie Sanders lost New York's primary by a double-digit margin. Polls suggest his delegate gap with Hillary Clinton is likely to widen after five states vote Tuesday. And Clinton is increasingly turning her fire on Donald Trump, confident that she will soon lock down the Democratic nomination.
Still, Sanders' supporters turn out, eager to hear his message but increasingly cognizant that their candidate's political chances are fading quickly by the day.
"I hate to say it, but I feel like I'm putting my head in a bag and just crossing my fingers," said Jessie Burnett, 39, a mother of three who lives in Tolland, Connecticut. "I'm throwing my full support behind him until he says he is out," she said, calling his chance of winning the Democratic nomination "terrible."
The increasing frequency of questions about whether and when Sanders might concede to Clinton — or at least tone down his attacks on her — frustrates not only the senator but also many of his fans. As enthusiastic as ever, Sanders repeatedly tells packed crowds that they should encourage family and friends to cast votes for him and that his "political revolution" counts on their ability to get others involved.
But a bleaker reality about the candidate's prospects is beginning to settle in among even his most ardent supporters.
David Wacker, 34, a Verizon service technician currently on strike, said that he planned to vote for Sanders on Tuesday in the Pennsylvania primary, but that he had already begun weighing what to do if the senator does not win the nomination.
"The odds are stacked against him," Wacker said, frowning as he held a sign for his union at a rally in Pittsburgh Monday. "I still believe he has an avenue to victory, but I'm a realist, I see that it is dwindling. But he is still my candidate that I'm passionate about, so I'm going to stay with him until the end."
Many of Sanders' supporters say they hope he will find a way to cut into Clinton's lead and persuade more superdelegates to back him. But some of those same supporters are also already mulling over whether to support Clinton should she prevail, and grappling with what his campaign might mean for progressive politics in the future.
Cynthia Kral, 38, of Pittsburgh, said she would never vote for Clinton. "I cannot trust her," Kral said, adding that she planned to vote for a third-party candidate or write in Sanders' name in the general election. "I feel like she can be bought on anything, and for her to be president — that kind of scares me."
Kral, an education assistant at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and another Sanders supporter who lives in Pittsburgh, Geoff Sanderson, 31, said they hoped that even if Sanders loses, the progressive movement he has ignited will continue past his candidacy.
"Part of it feels crushing," Sanderson, who manages a theater, said of the race. "The other part of it feels hopeful that at least this started something and that this isn't the end of it."
Clinton currently has 1,446 delegates to Sanders' 1,202, with 2,383 needed to capture the nomination. But her lead in superdelegates leaves her only about 400 delegates short of that majority. And polls show Sanders down in at least four of the five states voting Tuesday, with the senator trailing Clinton in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maryland.
Katherine Duncan, 30, of West Hartford, Connecticut, is holding out hope that Sanders will win, citing personal reasons. A career coach, she has more than $130,000 in student debt after getting her bachelor's in communications and her master's in public relations.
"It's just so overwhelming I don't know where to start," Duncan said. "It makes me have trouble sleeping at night. It's changing the course of my life in some ways, because I can't do things I want to do because I want to pay that debt off."
Determined to bolster the candidate's chances, she came to a Sanders rally in Hartford on Monday to take pictures and post them on social media sites in an effort to excite her family and friends about his candidacy.
"I feel confident that he's giving it everything he has, and so this is the least that I can do," she said.
Her steadfast support is echoed in the crowds Sanders continues to draw. About 1,800 people attended the rally in Hartford Monday and another 800 showed up for one in Pittsburgh, his campaign said. At each event, supporters cheered as Sanders laid out his plans to combat income inequality and tackle campaign finance reform.
During the Connecticut rally Monday, Sanders showed no signs of letting up as he repeatedly called on his supporters to cast ballots for him. "When we stand together and fight for an agenda that works for all of us, fight for a government that represents all of the people and not just the 1 percent, when we do that, there is nothing we cannot accomplish," he said.
Sanders' intensity is echoed by some of his highest-profile backers. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who this month became the first U.S. senator to endorse Sanders, said he believed that Sanders' attacks on Clinton's ties to Goldman Sachs and Wall Street were valid criticisms and that the party was benefiting from a prolonged nominating contest.
"He should very much be in the race," Merkley said of Sanders. "Both candidates have motivated many people to be involved. It has also prepared them to be better candidates in the general election."
But interviews with some Sanders supporters suggest that their loyalties may not long remain with the party.
Wacker, the striking Verizon technician, was once an independent, but switched his party affiliation recently to become a Democrat so he could vote for Sanders.
He said that he did not trust Clinton because of her ties to Wall Street, and that he believed she would make decisions from "an ivory tower."
"Even if she has good intentions, her mind is not really geared toward people like me," Wacker said of Clinton. "It's geared toward people who are going to help her out."