However, it will always be lower than the majority threshold — right now, it would require 1,050 delegates, rather than 1,144.
"DuHaime comes out and says it's all about delegates, rather than winning the state," Mr. Cullen said.
If so, spending some time in Puerto Rico could prevent Mr. Romney from hitting that mark, perhaps limiting him to 9 or 10 delegates rather than 20.
While Arizona is a winner-takes-all state, Michigan awards its delegates proportionally, and Mr. Romney made a show of focusing on the delegates rather than winning the entire state.
That would mean that Mrs. Clinton would narrow the delegate gap with Mr. Obama by a net of 19 delegates, rather than the 38 she would have gained under the January result.
Privately, staff say the campaign hopes to pick up delegates rather than win outright in Texas, but the senator did not seem to have gotten the memo about expectations management.
It is the first time in over 20 years in which the campaign has turned into a possibly lengthy hunt for delegates, rather than an effort to roll up a string of big-state victories.
But as a campaign message, it has all the inspirational appeal of a pie-chart-filled PowerPoint presentation, inviting suggestions that he views his party's nomination as the cold-eyed collection of delegates, rather than a battle for the hearts of Republican voters.
Mr. Obama's campaign argued that the Florida vote is a meaningless beauty contest, given the absence of candidates in the state and the fact that no candidate will win delegates in a contest that both sides have increasingly viewed as a race for delegates, rather than states.
