In response to my Daily 2008 entry that Hillary leads in most Feb. 5 states, a reader writes in:

The caveat I would put on that is that states do not matter to Democrats; congressional districts do in regards to awarding delegates. This is going to be a major race for delegates and there is so way that Hillary is sweeping every state. The things to watch will be how many of the delegates she is picking up in states she wins, if she can really hold on to delegates in the caucus states as Obama has shown that he wins more delegates in those, and how many delegates Edwards siphons off and from whom.

A good point to keep in mind, and one which Janet Hook addressed in her Los Angeles Times article today:

[T]he Obama campaign has a strategy for countering Clinton's big-state advantage -- one built in part on the Democratic rules for how delegates are awarded.

Rather than a winner-take-all system, in which the candidate who gets the most votes in a state claims all the delegates, Democrats have elaborate rules that award delegates in proportion to each candidate's share of the vote.

That means even a Clinton stronghold like New Jersey may produce some delegates for Obama -- and it explains why Obama visited Jersey City this month, weeks before New Jersey was set to vote, where a crowd of about 4,500 lined up to hear him.

Despite early predictions that the primary contest would be resolved by Feb. 5, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns now assume that neither candidate will lock up the nomination that day. Even a Clinton strategist predicts that the two will emerge with very close delegate counts.

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