The long, sometimes tortuous process of electing a US president, marked by baffling rules, quirky rituals and a history of surprises, enters its decisive stretch this month.
When Americans go to the polls on November 2, 2004, to choose between Republican President George W. Bush, who is seeking a second four-year term, and a challenger from the Democratic Party, it will be the culmination of 10 months of intensive campaigning, voting, caucuses and conventions.
Nine Democrats, some of whom have been campaigning for more than a year, are vying for the right to face Bush in November.
The party's nominee will be determined by a gruelling marathon of state-by-state contests that begins on January 19 in Iowa.
The Democratic front-runner is former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who began the race as a little-known long-shot but has parlayed his outspoken opposition to the Iraq war and his blunt criticism of Bush into the lead.
His chief rivals are Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, John Edwards of North Carolina and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Representative Richard Gephardt of Missouri and retired General Wesley Clark, the former commander of Nato.
The other candidates are Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, former Senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and civil rights activist Al Sharpton of New York.
They are competing state-by-state for delegates who will support them at the party's convention in Boston in late July, when the candidate who wins a majority of the 4,325 delegates will be nominated to lead the party.
The Republicans will formally select Bush, who is unopposed for the party nomination, at their convention in New York City August 30-September 2.
The state contests are typically either caucuses, where voters gather at local meetings to declare their presidential preference publicly, or primaries, in which votes are cast at polling places by secret ballot.
This public system of choosing nominees has developed over the past half-century as parties abandoned the closed system in which presidential nominees were chosen by political power brokers.
The modern nominating process gives enormous influence to two relatively small states: Iowa, which for the past 32 years has held the first caucuses of the campaign, and New Hampshire, which stages the first primary.
This year, the Iowa caucuses on January 19 will fall on a US holiday that honours civil rights leader Martin Luther King. The New Hampshire primary will follow eight days later, on January 27.
They will be followed by contests in seven states on February 3, caucuses in Michigan and Washington state on February 7, and primaries in Tennessee and Virginia on February 10.
Wisconsin will have a primary on February 17, and 11 states will hold March 2 contests that could determine the ultimate winner.
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