Senator Barack Obama was favoured to win Mississippi Democratic voters to his side later Tuesday in the drawn - out fight for his party's presidential nomination against Senator Hillary Clinton. ( dpa )
The southern state on the Gulf Coast is the next battleground after Obama won the Democratic caucuses in the western state of Wyoming on Saturday.
Obama had 61 per cent of the Wyoming vote to Clinton's 38 per cent, and the two candidates split the delegates proportionately, under Democratic Party rules.
In Mississippi, 33 of the 2,205 delegates needed to be named the party's candidate are up for grabs.
Clinton lags behind Obama in the delegate count needed to secure the nomination at the party's convention in Denver in August by 115 delegates. Clinton has 1,438 delegates compared to Obama's 1,553, according to CNN.
Republican Senator John McCain sealed his grip on the nomination last week and has turned his sights to raising money for his under- funded campaign.
After Mississippi, only five Democratic and six Republican state votes are left.
After a hectic campaign season, candidates will have six weeks to regroup before the last big-state primary in delegate- rich Pennsylvania on April 22. Polls there show Clinton, who grew up there as a young child, with an average lead of about 12 percentage points.
With the Democratic race so close, there is pressure for repeat voting in two states whose primary results were dismissed by the national party because they disobeyed directives not to hold their contests in January - Florida and Michigan.
Under Democratic rules, delegates are assigned proportional to the vote, meaning a candidate can lose the majority vote but still get a sizeable number of delegates.