DaytonDailyNews.com

WASHINGTON — By most electoral standards, a 60 percent to 40 percent win is an old-fashioned trouncing.

But should either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama win by that margin in Rep. John Boehner's 8th Congressional District on March 4, it won't have much impact at all.

The district — a swath of all or parts of Mercer, Darke, Miami, Preble and Montgomery counties — is one of seven in the state that will only get four delegates to the Democratic National Convention based on its primary results. And following Democratic primary election math in Ohio, it'll take 62.5 percent of the vote to get the majority of the delegates in that district and others.

And you thought the caucuses were tricky.

Like every other Democratic primary election, Ohio Democrats award their delegates on a proportional basis, meaning on the morning of March 5, both Clinton and Obama are likely to be richer in delegates.

But the way the state's 141 pledged delegates are divvied up makes for an interesting lesson in campaign strategizing: How can both candidates best spend the remaining days to maximize their delegate counts?

Republicans John McCain and Mike Huckabee have it simpler in Ohio. Whoever wins the state will get all of the state's 88 Republican delegates.

As of Thursday, Clinton had 1,024 pledged delegates, according to the Associated Press. Obama had 1,178. Clinton has focused much of her campaign efforts on Texas, with its 193 pledged delegates, and Ohio. But it's unlikely she'll walk away with the booty even if she does win decisively.

Instead, said John Green of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, because of the Democratic nature of northeast Ohio, it's likely candidates will focus their resources and time there in the few weeks left before March 4. "It makes sense for a candidate to concentrate time and resources where there are the most delegates to be gained," he said.

Most of the southwest Ohio districts have just four delegates. The exception is the 3rd Congressional District, represented by Mike Turner, R-Centerville, which gets five. Whoever wins there will likely gain a delegate advantage without having to annihilate the other candidate at the polls.

The delegate math for Democrats works out this way: 92 delegates allocated according to congressional district, 49 at-large delegates awarded based on the outcome of Ohio's primary, and 21 "super delegates" — party luminaries who aren't required to pledge themselves to a particular candidate. Most of Ohio's superdelegates are currently unpledged.

David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama, insists such calculations don't enter the campaign's plans as it plots where to send the candidate and his wife, Michelle. "We're going to have opportunities for Sen. Obama and his surrogates to be in every corner of the state and spend a lot of time on the ground," he said.

He emphasized, however, that the proportional system of allocating delegates in Texas and Ohio favors the candidate who leads the delegate count. "The only way in this system that you amass delegates is win by big margins," he said. "Close races generally result in equal delegate distribution.... We think this is a very, very hard lead for Sen. Clinton to erode and the only way to do it is to win the state of Ohio 65 to 35 and Texas 65 to 35."

Harold Ickes, a Clinton adviser, was less specific, simply saying he expected Clinton to "narrow that gap substantially" after Texas and Ohio.

"These are very important states for Hillary," he said. "And we expect her to do very well in them."