Hillary Clinton is expected to concede defeat in the race for the Democratic nomination against front-runner Barack Obama

Senior advisers to Senator Hillary Clinton prepared the ground yesterday for her to abandon her presidential ambitions within days rather than disputing the Democratic nomination all the way to the party convention in August.

Senator Barack Obama is expected to be able to declare himself the party's candidate against Senator John McCain as early as tomorrow, when South Dakota and Montana become the final states to hold their primaries. Just after the polls close, Mr Obama, who could be accompanied by senior Democratic Party figures, is to hold a huge rally in Minnesota, at the venue where Mr McCain is due to accept the Republican nomination in September.

His aides were working furiously yesterday to amass the two dozen or so 'super-delegates' -- party officials whose convention votes are not tied to the primaries -- he would need to ensure that the South Dakota and Montana results would give him a majority. Terry McAuliffe, Mrs Clinton's campaign chairman, told ABC News: "We'll see where we are when we finish up Tuesday. Then super-delegates will begin to move. But we're going to make our argument right up until someone has that number.''

Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, said it would be decided this week: "We don't want to go to the convention, have a big fight at the convention, and lose the presidency.''

A dispute over whether and how to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida was resolved on Saturday by giving each delegate only half a vote as a penalty for those states defying the party by holding early primaries.

The Clinton camp was unhappy with the decision, which raised the number of delegates needed for victory from 2,025 to 2,118, but showed little appetite to challenge.

Stake

According to the non-aligned RealClearPolitics website, Mr Obama has 2,051 delegates to Mrs Clinton's 1,876. There were 55 delegates at stake in Puerto Rico, which voted yesterday and 31 will be at stake in South Dakota and Montana.

Mrs Clinton was expected to win in Puerto Rico while Mr Obama appears to have clear leads in the last two states. If the two candidates split the delegates, that would leave Mr Obama needing just 24 of the remaining 178 undecided super-delegates for outright victory.

Even Harold Ickes, Mrs Clinton's fearsomely combative senior adviser, appeared to be close to conceding defeat. When asked whether the former First Lady would congratulate Mr Obama tomorrow, he said: "We expect to get the nomination and we're making the case.''

Last week, Mrs Clinton said she expected undecided super-delegates to make up their mind quickly after tomorrow. Her rapidly fading hopes rested on her being able to persuade 90pc of them to overturn Mr Obama's delegate lead because of her contention that she would be the stronger candidate against Mr McCain. (© Daily Telegraph, London)