The Texas contest is somewhat complicated in that it is a mixture of a primary and caucus.  Voters in essence get to vote twice.  First voters vote during the day at the primary, which is an open primary where republicans and independents can vote.  Then right after the doors shut at 7pm on March 4th, the caucus begins and lasts until Texas’ democratic caucus on June 6th.  Voters can come back after 7pm in the evening on the same day and vote again during the caucus. There are 193 Texas delegates at stake on March 4th.  Of the 193, 126 of the delegates will be handed out from the primary portion.  And the 67 remainder delegates will handed out at the state convention in June.  Delegates are allocated based on how voters turned out in past elections.  The greater the turnout in the district the more delegates the district receives in the next election.  As for delegates relating to heavily african-american and hispanic districts in Texas, this year’s allocation favors the heavily african-american districts because such districts turned out in greater numbers in the last election than the heavily hispanic districts.   Therefore, african-american districts in Texas will receive more delegates than many of latino districts in Texas.  Early voting in Texas began on February 19th.  Primaries are also being held in Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island.  Both the democrats and republicans hosts primaries in all four states on March 4th, except Texas also hosts a caucus. The two most delegate rich states are Texas and Ohio.  For the democrats, 370 delegates at stake on Tuesday.  Texas distributes (126)193, Ohio distributes 141, Vermont distributes 15, and Rhode Island distributes 21 delegates.  Currently Obama is leading with 1192 delegates to Clinton’s 1036.  For the republicans, 256 delegates are at stake on Tuesday.  Ohio distributes 85, Rhode Island distributes 17, Texas distributes 137, and Vermont distributes 17.  Currently McCain has 930 delegates and only needs 261 more to clinch the nomination.