Clinton adds delegates, but still trails Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won most of the delegates in West Virginia’s Democratic primary Tuesday.

Clinton added at least 15 delegates, but still trails Sen. Barack Obama by a large margin in the race for the Democratic nomination. The remaining 13 delegates were still to be awarded.

Obama leads the overall race for the nomination with 1,875.5 delegates, including endorsements from party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Clinton has 1,712, according to the latest AP tally.
It will take 2,025 delegates to claim the Democratic nomination at the party’s national convention this summer.

Earlier Tuesday, Obama picked up four superdelegate endorsements, giving him 30 in the past week. Clinton added two during the same period. Obama erased Clinton’s once-imposing lead in superdelegate endorsements on Saturday.

Obama now leads in states won, pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses, and superdelegates.

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain clinched his party’s nomination March 4.
Nebraska also held presidential primaries Tuesday, but no delegates were at stake for Democrats or Republicans. Obama won Nebraska’s Democratic caucuses on Feb. 9.

The AP tracks the delegate races by calculating the number of national convention delegates won by candidates in each presidential primary or caucus, based on state and national party rules, and by interviewing unpledged delegates to obtain their preferences.

Most primaries and some caucuses are binding, meaning delegates won by the candidates are pledged to support that candidate at the national conventions this summer.

Political parties in some states, however, use multistep procedures to award national delegates. Typically, such states use local caucuses to elect delegates to state or congressional district conventions, where national delegates are selected. In these states, the AP uses the results from local caucuses to calculate the number of national delegates each candidate will win, if the candidate’s level of support at the caucus doesn’t change.