Obama Advisers Foresee a Delegate Draw With Clinton

By Catherine Dodge and Alex Tanzi

Feb 7, Bloomberg

Barack Obama's advisers are anticipating the possibility of a Democratic presidential race deadlocked past the last primary, and the outcome may hinge on a fight over whether delegations from Florida and Michigan get seats at the party's national convention in Denver.

One scenario prepared for the Illinois senator's campaign and released inadvertently yesterday with another document projects Obama will end up in June with 1,806 of the delegates who select the party's nominee to 1,789 for New York Senator Hillary Clinton. That is short of the number needed to win the nomination.

Obama, speaking with reporters traveling to Omaha on his campaign plane, said he hadn't seen the document. ``I think it's going to be close,'' he said of the nomination battle. ``Down to the wire.''

A candidate needs half of the total delegates plus one. Right now, that figure is 2,025. Any additional convention delegates would raise the amount needed to win nomination.

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photo: Barack Obama, Democratic senator of Illinois, speaks in Columbia, South Carolina, on Jan. 26, 2008, left, and Hillary Clinton, Democratic senator of New York, speaks in Worcester, Massachusetts, on Feb. 4, 2008, in a composite photo. (Photographers: Keith Bedford (Obama), and Cheryl Senter (Clinton)/Bloomberg News)