Washington,Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who would be America's first black president, scored facile wins in three states giving a huge blow to Hillary Clinton's bid to be the country's first woman chief executive.

Obama swept Nebraska, Washington and Louisiana Saturday with over two thirds voter support, but the contests likely still left the nomination issue unresolved and focused attention on a group of party insiders who might play a decisive role in their fierce battle.

As the Democratic Party awards delegates proportionally, Saturday's victories would assure Obama a larger share of 78 delegates at stake. But loser Clinton too stands to walk away with a significant share of the delegates.

Their neck and neck fight so far has thus turned the spotlight on a group of people known as super delegates who can tilt the balance in favour of one or the other.

About 15 to 20 percent of the delegates at Democratic conventions are super delegates, created in 1982 to restore some of the power over the nomination process to party insiders.

Since these 796 people, including Democratic governors and members of Congress and party leaders, are free to cast their votes the way they want at the party's nomination convention in August, they could serve as tie-breakers if neither Obama nor Clinton finishes the primary season with the 2,025 delegates needed to win.

Obama, talking to reporters in Seattle Friday, said he believed super delegates should follow the will of the voters.

Clinton, campaigning Saturday in Maine, disputed Obama's interpretation of how super delegates should make their decision, arguing that they should make an independent decision based on who they thought would be the strongest candidate and president.

Even before the voting began both campaigns were giving the advantage Saturday to Obama, who has done well in caucuses and among black voters, who made about half of those voting in the Louisiana primary and gave him one of his largest margins yet among African-Americans.

The Democrats held their caucuses in Kansas last Tuesday, with Obama the winner.

On the Republican side, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee won the Kansas caucuses by a wide margin and was running close with Senator John McCain in early returns in Louisiana and Washington.

The results showed the Baptist preacher is still attracting voters even as the majority of the Republican Party is beginning to rally around McCain, who became all-but-certain party nominee with the withdrawal of his chief rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

"This race is far from being over," Huckabee told reporters after his Kansas victory, but McCain's campaign played down the results. "Our campaign fully expected to fall short in the Kansas caucus," said a spokeswoman.

"John McCain is the presumptive nominee in this race and our path forward is unchanged by today's results. Our focus remains the same: uniting the Republican Party to defeat Democrats in 2008."

Still, before the Kansas results came in Saturday, Huckabee addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington and then told reporters he had no intention of dropping out until one of the Republican candidates amassed the 1,191 delegates needed to be the nominee.

McCain has 703 delegates so far, Huckabee, 190, and Paul, 42.

McCain is far enough ahead in the delegate race that his advisers have said it would be all but impossible for anyone else to win the nomination. But Huckabee said: "I didn't major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them, too."

He compared himself to Ronald Reagan challenging Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976. "He was the pariah of the party," he said. "Now people love Ronald Reagan."

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