Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama takes the stage at a rally on Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa. (M. Spencer Green/Associated Press)

Barack Obama has all but won his drive to be the Democratic party's nominee for president, despite splitting the latest pair of state primary elections with his rival Hillary Clinton, analysts said Wednesday.

U.S. media projections said Obama had won the primary in Oregon, while losing handily to Clinton in Kentucky, but the result had still moved him within shouting distance of getting a majority of the delegates needed to tip the nomination at August's Democratic National Convention in Denver.

The Illinois senator picked up at least 14 delegates in the Kentucky loss, giving him 1,931 out of the 2,026 needed to secure the nomination. Clinton has 1,755 delegates after gaining at least 37 in the state's contest. Obama was set to get most of Oregon's 52 delegates.

Obama's overall total includes a majority of the appointed superdelegates, who can choose which nominee to support based on their own loyalties or the candidate's popularity with the U.S. electorate.

News analysts for the Associated Press and other U.S. media outlets have declared the race between Obama and Clinton to be all but over, with only two sparsely populated states and the territory of Puerto Rico yet to hold primaries.

Obama's lead cannot be overcome mathematically and the trend among superdelegates is an almost overwhelming wave of support for his candidacy.

Clinton's recent electoral successes and her tenacity have won her political kudos in her party and with the electorate, analysts say.

Even Obama has been praising her.

Obama lauds Clinton

"No matter how this primary [season] ends," Obama said late Tuesday, "Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and your daughters will come of age."

Clinton has shown no signs that she's prepared to leave the race before the end of the primaries in early June. Her supporters say they'll be pressing for results of voting in Michigan and Florida, which were excluded because of a dispute over the timing of primary elections, to be counted on the convention floor in August.

"Neither Senator Obama nor I will have reached that magic number when the voting ends on June 3," she said Tuesday night in Kentucky. "And so, our party will have a tough choice to make — who's ready to lead our party at the top of our ticket, who is ready to defeat Senator McCain in the swing states and among swing voters?"

Clinton's strong support among white, lower middle and working class Americans have raised fears of a divide in the Democratic electorate, said CBC's Henry Champ in Washington.

"There is a fault developing here that the party is worried about," Champ said, adding that Obama is reaching out to Clinton supporters because he will need them in order to secure the presidency in November's elections.

Analysts speculate that Clinton is staying in the race to cement her position within the party, possibly making a case to be Obama's vice-presidential candidate, or majority leader in the Senate, one of the most powerful political positions in the United States.

Meanwhile, Obama has been downplaying the remaining primaries and focusing his campaign on the presumptive Republican party presidential candidate, John McCain.

A newly released opinion poll gives him an eight-point lead over McCain among decided voters, an improvement from an almost dead heat between the two men last month.

"Obama has been very resilient," pollster John Zogby told Reuter's news agency, "bouncing back from rough periods and doing very well with independent voters. The race with McCain will be very competitive."

Both candidates are campaigning in Florida Wednesday, with Clinton pressing for the state's voters to be given a role in the Democratic convention and Obama talking about the race with McCain in a key electoral battleground for the White House.

With files from the Associated Press