News Analysis: Will Super Tuesday end U.S. presidential nomination race?

Source: Xinhua | 02-06-2008 13:49

Different post-Super Tuesday scenarios are under speculation as 24 U.S. states and American Samoa began voting early this morning in primaries and caucuses for the presidential nomination race.

On Feb. 5, a total of more than 1,600 of the total 4,049 Democratic delegates to the national nomination convention and almost 950 of the 2,380 Republican delegates will be allocated in what is almost a national primary.

However, U.S. media and political analysts are still debating whether Super Tuesday could bring the nomination race to an end.

On the Democratic side, caught in a close tie with Illinois Senator Barack Obama, New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her team are poised to continue her campaign after Super Tuesday.

"The nominating rules of our party are really designed to prolong a contest between two strong candidates," spokesman Howard Wolfson for Clinton told reporters.

To become a Democratic presidential nominee, a candidate has to win at least 2,025 delegates, a winning majority of the total that will attend the party's National Convention in Denver, Colorado in late August.

Out of the total number, 3,253 delegates are elected or chosen at the state and local level but they are not actually bound to vote for the candidate.

The party uses proportional representation to decide how many pledged delegates are awarded to each candidate.

The rest are the "super-delegates" who are usually automatically obtained by the party's senior members and officials.

Obama's campaign outlined its goal in the face of Clinton's strong lead in many of the 22 states holding Democratic contests.

"If Obama wins a few (states) and stays within 100 delegates of Clinton on Tuesday, we will have met our threshold for success," his campaign manager David Plouffe said in a memo, indicating a later showdown with Clinton.

On the Republican side, because of the "winner-take-all" rule applied to many of the 21 states holding Tuesday races, especially those delegate-rich big states, Arizona Senator John McCain's double-digit lead over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is expected to widen, which will solidify his status as the most likely presidential nominee.

Whoever is nominated by a majority of delegates, 1,191 or more, at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota in early September, will contend in the national election for the party.