Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008, is when 22 states and American Samoa will hold Democratic contests in which 41% of all presidential delegates will be awarded. Also that day, 21 states will hold Republican contests with approximately 43% of their presidential delegates being awarded. Super Tuesday is therefore the day when nearly half of the delegates to both parties will have been chosen and we will have an indication of who the presidential candidate will be for this year's General Election on Nov. 4, 2008.

However, when it comes to presidential primaries and caucuses, the delegates are what really decide who will be each party's nominee (click here for KGMB9's Presidential FAQ). Democrats, by their party rules, divvy out delegates proportinally to the votes cast above the 'viability' threshold of 15%. This means that the candidates get a percentage of the delegates from the state. We'll use Florida as an example where Sen. Hillary Clinton received 50% of the votes and Sen. Barak Obama received 33% of the vote, however the delegates were distributed 16 for Clinton and 15 for Obama. This year, Super Tuesday has 1,681 delegates at stake for the Democrats.

The Republican party has some states with a 'winner take all' delegate distribution. This means if a candidate receives the largest percentage of the votes cast, they may receive all of the delegates from that state. An example of that was Jan. 29 in Florida where Sen. John McCain received 36% of the vote, but received all 57 delegates from the state. 16 of the 21 states on Super Tuesday have a form of a 'winner take all' election. 975 delegates are at stake for the Republicans on Super Tuesday.

Both parties also have exeptions to the rules as each state has slight deviations from the rest. In fact, Michigan and Florida had all of the delegates stripped by the Democratic National Committee for rules violations in the scheduling of their primaries. The Democrats also have 796 superdelegates who are not bound by the results of the primaries and caucuses. On the Republican side, Colorado and Minnesota have informal straw polls that are non-binding for the Republican National Convention. Therefore these states have caucuses, but no locked in delegates for a candidate.

The table below has the states, poll closing times in Hawaii Standard Time and the number of delegates to be decided on Super Tuesday.