Puerto Rico moves Obama closer to nomination

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer 27 minutes ago

Hillary Rodham Clinton won most of the delegates in Puerto Rico's primary Sunday, but Barack Obama crept closer to clinching the Democratic nomination for president.

Clinton won at least 38 delegates, according to an Associated Press analysis of election results. Obama won at least 16, with one still to be allocated.

Obama has a total of 2,070 delegates, leaving him 48 shy of the number needed to clinch the nomination, with two primaries remaining. Clinton has 1915.5, according to the latest tally by the AP.

Obama also picked up two superdelegates Sunday, which means he has made up most of the ground he lost Saturday when the national party's rules committee voted to reinstate delegates from Michigan and Florida. The delegates had been stripped because the two states violated party rules by holding primaries before Feb. 5.

Before Saturday's decision, Obama was 42 delegates shy of the nomination. Seating delegates from Florida and Michigan increased the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination to 2,118.

There are a total of 31 delegates at stake in Tuesday's contests in Montana and South Dakota. If Clinton and Obama split them, Obama would need to pick up about 30 superdelegates to secure the nomination.

There are about 200 superdelegates left to be claimed. Clinton would need more than 180 of them.

Superdelegates are the party and elected officials who automatically attend the party's national convention and can support whomever they choose, regardless of what happens in the primaries.

Both political parties include Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories in their nominating processes. However, residents are not allowed to vote in the general election.

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.