By Wang Wei

    WASHINGTON, May 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was counting on a victory in the West Virginia primary to pull her campaign out of a dead end as thousands of voters in the state cast their ballots Tuesday to choose a presidential nominee.

    Clinton's big win in West Virginia has been forecast by political analysts and all recent polls in the state.

    One of the surveys, which was conducted by Boston-based Suffolk University Political Research Center, indicated Clinton's lead over her rival Illinois Senator Barack Obama stood at 36 percentage points.

    The mountain state was described by Fox News as the friendliest terrain yet to the New York Senator in her drawn-out struggle with Obama for the presidential candidacy.

    Demographically, the state is a makeup of woman, white, older, working-class and culturally conservative voters, who all favor Clinton, shown from the previous primaries and caucuses.

    It also has a dearth of two key supporter groups behind Obama's success -- the black population accounts for just 3.3 percent of the total and holders of a Bachelor's degree or higher take up only 14.8 percent among adults aged 25 or older, the lowest figure among the 50 states.

    Even Obama himself conceded to his rival in the coming showdown Tuesday, telling Time Magazine "she is very heavily favored to win West Virginia ... she'll win that by a big margin."

    He also admitted Clinton is also favored in Kentucky, a neighbor state similar with West Virginia demographically.

    However, wins in the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries, if possible, are hardly big enough to carry Clinton's hopes of rebuilding her campaign's viability.

    After Clinton lost North Carolina by a large margin and narrowly won Indiana on May 6, pressure was mounting on her to drop the race and clear the way for the Democratic Party to the November general elections.

    "I'm staying in this race until there's a nominee, and I obviously am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee," she vowed before reporters in West Virginia on May 7.

    She surely can stay, however, to face a rough road ahead and a tricky math problem.

    Obama is currently leading Clinton in the numbers of pledged delegates and superdelegates, both of whom will vote to decide the party's presidential nominee at the national convention late August, as well as the numbers of winning states and popular votes, the three key criteria to judge who is the winner.

    With no more than one month left before primary season ends, Obama has gained 1,869 delegates, only 156 short of 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination. For many political analysts, it is hard to imagine how Clinton, who has 1,697 delegates, can exceed Obama and regain the lead in the race in such a short time.

    Clinton, on the other hand, was struggling to survive her campaign financially by lending herself more than 6 million U.S. dollars, compared to 42 million dollars Obama has in his campaign fund account as of early April.

    The lifesaving medicine for Clinton's bid for the White House, prescribed by campaign aides and political analysts, include attracting the remaining 246 superdelegates who have not cast their votes to swing to her, which is unlikely since Obama takes lead in the race.

    She can also count on the battle over seating disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan with full voting rights, which, at a minimum, can give her the opportunity to argue that Obama should need more than 2,025 delegates to win the nomination and give her more time to catch up.

    The two states that overwhelmingly voted for Clinton have been stripped of all delegates because they violated the Democratic Party's rule by moving forward the primaries ahead of Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

    Clinton's advisors told the Washington Post that they have sketched out a scenario to win the nomination, including winning three of the final six primaries in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico, seating Florida and Michigan delegates at the national convention, and preventing Obama from winning a substantial number of uncommitted superdelegates before primary season ends.