(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-18 10:24

ROSEBURG - Sen. Barack Obama, hoping that a pair of contests in Oregon and Kentucky on Tuesday will allow him to essentially clinch the Democratic nomination, will make a symbolic return to Iowa, the state that launched his underdog bid for the White House.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) waits to speak as he is introduced at a town hall campaign event at the Roseburg High School in Roseburg, Oregon May 17, 2008. [Agencies]

Polls suggest Obama will win Oregon comfortably while his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, is expected to prevail in Kentucky by a wide margin.

But the Obama campaign expects that when the results from the two contests are added to his existing tally, he will have racked up more than half of the pledged delegates awarded in the state-by-state contests, making him the likely winner in his battle with Clinton to become his party's nominee to face presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in November.

Neither Obama nor Clinton will have enough pledged delegates to lock up the nomination, but Obama contends that superdelegates -- party leaders and elected officials with their own vote in the process -- should back the leader in pledged delegates.

The nominating contests began in January in Iowa, where Obama, an Illinois senator, beat Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady who was the national front-runner then and had an aura of inevitability.

Obama's trip to Iowa on Tuesday offers not only a chance for him to look back on the race, but also an opportunity to look ahead to the potential fight with McCain.

Iowa, which has a history of being closely divided between Democrats and Republicans in the presidential race, is expected to be an important battleground state in November.

An Obama aide played down the idea that the Iowa trip would be a "victory celebration."

"This is meant to be a look to what's ahead," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Iowa is a key general election state," the aide said, noting it had gone for President George W. Bush, a Republican, in 2004 and former Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee in 2000.

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