MAGIC NUMBER
"Neither Senator Obama or I will have reached that magic number when the voting ends June 3," Clinton said of the number of delegates needed to win the nomination. "So our party will have a tough choice to make."
Obama aides said he could reach the magic number with a wave of superdelegate endorsements in the next two weeks. Three more contests remain - Puerto Rico on June 1 and Montana and South Dakota on June 3 - with a combined 86 delegates at stake.
Both candidates head on Wednesday to Florida, a major battleground in November. Clinton is still fighting for the seating of delegates from Michigan and Florida, where she won contests that were not recognized by the national party. Their seating would narrow Obama's lead in the race.
"I'm going on now to campaign in Montana, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico, and I'm going to keep standing up for the voters of Florida and Michigan," she said.
Clinton also hopes her continued drubbings of Obama in states like Kentucky, where she won by 35 points, will give superdelegates pause.
Exit polls showed Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, had difficulty with white working-class voters in Kentucky as he has in some other states. Clinton won more than 70 percent of white voters, and three-quarters of those who did not finish college.
About 20 percent said race played a factor in their vote - similar to the percentage last week in West Virginia, where Clinton trounced Obama.
A delegate count by MSNBC gives Obama 1,941 delegates to Clinton's 1,772. He had 1,636 pledged delegates, with 1,627 representing a majority.
Obama's success has been fuelled by record fundraising. He reported raising $31.3 million (15.9 million pounds) in April, down from the $42.8 million he raised in March, and had $37.3 million in the bank to fund his campaign, his campaign said.
Tuesday was the deadline for filing monthly financial reports with the Federal Election Commission. The Clinton campaign said it raised $22 million in April, up slightly from $20.9 million in March.
The campaign has admitted to being more than $20 million in debt and did not say how much cash it had or still owed.
