By Prensa Latina
Washington : The basic strategy of US presidential candidates for Super Tuesday is to accumulate as many delegates as possible, regardless of whether or not one “wins” the state.
Three thousand delegates are in dispute by both political parties today, leading to intense campaigning; for example, by Clinton in Illinois, where she does not expect to win, but hopes to get a healthy number of representatives.
Barack Obama is using a similar technique in New York and California, where even the one in second place will net a significant number of delegates to the National Convention in August.
Under Democrat Party rules, candidates may obtain representatives with at least 15 percent of the vote in any of the 224 districts organizing elections Tuesday. The Democrat candidate will need 2,025 delegates, and almost 50 percent of them will be from New York, Illinois, California and Massachusetts.
For Republicans, who need 1,081 delegates, strategies are a little different because they apply the “Winner Take All” regulation in many places.
So Republican candidate John McCain is not campaigning in Utah, where a sizzling and overwhelming victory for rival Mitt Romney is predicted, with no concessions for second place on the list.
Similarly, Romney has not appeared in Arizona, another “winner-take-all” jurisdiction and totally partial to Vietnam Vet Romney.