Preliminary polls show Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., with commanding leads in most states voting in today's "Super Tuesday" presidential primaries.
A total of 1,511 delegates are up for grabs in primaries across 10 states: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.
To get the nomination, a candidate needs 2,162 delegates. At present, Kerry has 754; Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., has 220.
The biggest prizes Tuesday are in the California and New York primaries, with 370 and 236 delegates at stake, respectively.
Kerry has a large lead over Edwards in both of these states. A Feb. 22-24 American Research Group tracking poll shows Kerry leading Edwards 54 percent to 21 percent in New York.
And, according to NBC News, Kerry leads by 30 to 40 points in most recent California polls.
Many political analysts speculate that the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, which in recent weeks has boiled down to a two-man race between Edwards and Kerry, will effectively be over if Kerry wins all 10 Super Tuesday states.
To date, Kerry has already captured 18 of the 20 states in the nomination contest.
But, Edwards, whose only victory so far has been in the South Carolina Primary, has said he will stay in the race even if he does not win a single state Tuesday.
On Monday, both candidates focused their campaigns on the two states where the race is expected to be the closest: Ohio and Georgia.
Edwards is expected to make a solid showing in Ohio because his calls for restrictions on free trade is popular in the state, which has seen many of its manufacturing jobs disappear abroad, and in Georgia because of his Southern origin.
Even in these states, however, Edwards trails Kerry by double digits according to recent polls.
Edwards' Ohio Press Secretary Patrick Dillon said that he expects Edwards to rally in these two states.
"Edwards always closes strong in the last couple days before primaries," Dillon said. "We think that the race is much closer than what the public polls show."
If Edwards does not have a convincing showing on Super Tuesday, there will be tremendous pressure within the Democratic party for him to end his campaign, according to Rockefeller Center Director Linda Fowler.
However, Fowler expressed that it would be a very problematic situation for the Democrats if Edwards were to quit. "Basically all of the southern states would have had no say in choosing the Democratic nominee," she said.
Prior to Tuesday's primary in Georgia, the only deep-south state to weigh in on the Democratic nomination has been South Carolina, where Edwards was born.
"It would be better for the party if Kerry had to actually go into the South to campaign," Fowler said.
Fowler explained that the original Super Tuesday, scheduled for the second Tuesday in March, was conceived by a block of southern states as a way to combat the overwhelming influence of northern states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, in determining presidential nominees.
Overtime, major industrial states, such as New York, Massachussetts, Ohio and California piggybacked the idea of blocking their primaries together in order amplify their states' impacts on the race, and created the "new" Super Tuesday, which takes place on the first Tuesday in March.
Fowler said that the creation of the "new" Super Tuesday has further quashed the southern voice in presidential primaries.
"It may very well be that Edwards understands his obligation of giving the South a voice in the primaries by saying that he will survive into next week, even if he can't win the necessary amount of delegates to actually receive the nomination," Fowler said.
