US:For the first time in modern history, the small mid-western state of Wisconsin will play a pivotal role in US presidential elections when it goes to the polls next Tuesday in the latest phase of the battle for the Democratic nomination between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Mrs Clinton, who desperately needs to resurrect her campaign after a string of increasingly crushing defeats to Mr Obama since "Super Tuesday", travels to Madison, Wisconsin, today and will remain in the state almost continuously until Tuesday.
Yesterday Mr Obama's campaign got a major boost as he won the endorsement of the influential 1.9-million-member Service Employees' International Union. Its president, Andy Stern, said the union's executive board "overwhelmingly" decided to endorse Senator Obama for president.
"We do think he has the experience and the vision we need in our next president," Mr Stern said. The labour group, he added, also had "enormous respect" for Mrs Clinton, who is facing a growing number of defections among the "super-delegates" that had previously pledged their support to her. The most recent - reported in the New York Times yesterday - is John Lewis, the prominent African-American congressman and former civil rights activist, who said he could not ignore the expressed wishes of his constituents.
Although Wisconsin only provides 92 out of the 4,049 delegates being contested, the Clinton campaign sees it as a critical dress rehearsal for the more important primary in Ohio on March 4th which, together with Texas, provides almost 400 delegates.
Opinion polls suggest that Mrs Clinton is unlikely to stave off a ninth consecutive defeat to Mr Obama on Tuesday, when he is also expected to retain his home state of Hawaii, which supplies 29 delegates, in what would make it 10 straight losses. But Clinton officials believe it is imperative they forestall the kind of sweeping two-to-one defeat in Wisconsin that she has recently suffered. Even a narrow loss, they believe, could give pause to what many now project as an unstoppable Obama momentum.
"If Mrs Clinton can restrict the margin of her defeat in Wisconsin then it would psychologically enable them to say they are slowing the Obama momentum," said Tony Corrado, a specialist in primary campaigns at Colby College in Maine. "If she is unable to do that, then she faces a very real possibility of losing in either Ohio or Texas, which could put an end to her hopes of the nomination." A leaked Obama campaign memo projects a 7 percentage point margin of victory over Mrs Clinton in Wisconsin.
Others believe it could be much higher. With Mr Obama now holding a lead over Mrs Clinton of at least 150 delegates - and also an overall lead of about 50 delegates if the pledges of the unelected "super-delegates" are included in the count - another series of defeats would almost certainly put the nomination beyond Mrs Clinton's reach.