The delegates counts are the numbers of electors each candidate gets on election night. Both are trying to get 270.
as of April 5 there are still 689 delegates remaining.
1144 delegates are needed to win the 2012 Republican nomination.
2025 delegates are needed to win the democratic nomination. However, mre than 40% of the needed delegate are so-called "super delegates". This means they are free to pledge their votes to whomever they please, and don't have to vote for the winner of the given caucus or primary. This "safety valve" was implemented to prevent candidates from fundamentally changing the system.
Enough.
New York has 247 delegates in the Democratic primary.
In the 2008 Presidential election, there were 23 Democratic delegates for South Dakota at the Democratic Convention. Currently, South Dakota will have 24 delegates for 2012.
1144
74 delegates plus 18 super delegates democratic. 40 delegates republican
From Wikipedia: Delegates are the people who will decide the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Delegates from the fifty US states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have a single vote each, while some delegates from American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, Guam and Democrats Abroad have half a vote each. Thus, the total number of delegates is slightly higher than the total number of available delegate votes (4,048).
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#D
188 delegates total, with 30 of them uncommitted.
C and B are both correct, I think. National primaries award votes to candidates at the conventions, but not all states have them and there are other delegates that are not bound by primaries. In recent years, one candidate has won so many votes in primaries that the nomination is either locked up or almost locked up, but it is possible that no candidate would have a clear edge when the convention begins. Primaries only bind delegates for the first ballot.