In White House race, it's delegates that count

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a hotly contested presidential race, votes are nice -- but it's delegates to this summer's nominating conventions that count.

While the Democratic and Republican presidential contenders dash coast-to-coast to hunt votes in 24 state contests on Tuesday, their campaign aides are focused on the state-by-state battle to accumulate convention delegates who select the nominee.

More than half of all Democratic delegates will be up for grabs on Tuesday, and about 40 percent of Republican delegates are at stake in the biggest single day of presidential primary voting in campaign history.

"It's useful to win states, but states don't vote -- delegates do," said Harold Ickes, who is heading up the delegate operation for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

"This is very much a race for delegates at this point," said Ickes, a longtime Clinton insider and aide to President Bill Clinton.

The delegate chase is particularly crucial for the Democratic contenders, Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who are running neck-and-neck for the right to represent the party in November's presidential election.

Unlike Republicans, Democrats distribute delegates among candidates in proportion to their vote statewide and in individual congressional districts. As a result, candidates can come away with big chunks of delegates even in states they lose.

In a tight race like the one between Clinton and Obama, the rules ensure no one is likely to get too big a lead and the battle is almost certain to extend to later contests in Virginia, Maryland, Wisconsin and beyond.

It could even extend to the August convention, when the delegates will cast their votes to elect the party's nominee -- although few party activists expect that to happen.

"In a two-candidate race, it's going to be very hard to deliver a knockout blow with elected delegates," Ickes said. "On the other hand, once someone gets a serious lead in delegates, it's going to be very hard to overtake them."

Democrats require 2,025 delegates to secure the party's presidential nomination. Republicans need 1,191 delegates to clinch the nomination.

The effect of the Democratic rules was evident in earlier state contests. While Clinton won the most votes in Nevada, Obama managed to win a projected 13 delegates to her 12 because of his strength in rural areas around the state.

Clinton also narrowly won New Hampshire, but the two candidates tied in delegates. Obama's win in Iowa gave him only one more projected delegate than Clinton.

"We're trying to do as well as we can in every state," said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, who added next week's winner "will be very clear on February 6 in terms of the amount of delegates won."

REPUBLICANS DIFFERENT

Republican rules, in contrast, make many of their state contests winner-take-all, in which the top vote-getter corrals all of the state's delegates.

That could give Arizona Sen. John McCain, the front-runner among Republicans after his victory in Florida, an opportunity to take a prohibitive lead on Tuesday over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

California, the biggest prize in either party, is an exception for Republicans. It allocates delegates by congressional district, meaning Romney or former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee can lose the state to McCain but still pick up delegates if they do well in selected regions.

"If most people agree February 5 is a big delegate hunt, it puts us in a good position," said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. "We're competitive in California and we have a lot of opportunities there."

The Democratic delegate picture also is complicated by the party's nearly 800 "super-delegates" -- members of Congress, governors and about 400 Democratic National Committee members who are not bound by vote results and can switch their allegiance at any time.

Both campaigns have made a heavy effort to woo those party insiders, and by most estimates Clinton has an early lead on Obama among them.

Tracking and courting those super-delegates is a one-on-one process involving phone calls, donors and whatever methods of persuasion work best, Ickes said.

"Delegate hunting is a unique operation where you talk to people, find out their concerns and talk it through with them," Ickes said.

"It's a very individualized, very tailored, very customized operation and we try to know as much about every super-delegate as possible before we go after them."

(Editing by David Wiessler)

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)