U.S. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has spent months on the campaign trail and driven all his rivals from the Republican race, and Tuesday night he could mathematically secure the party's nomination, DPA reported.
The first votes were cast in January in the Midwestern state of Iowa, and now Romney is close to securing 1,144 delegates, the majority needed to clinch the conservative party's nomination at its convention in late August.
A primary election in the state of Texas is expected to lift Romney beyond that threshold - though he has been the presumptive nominee for weeks since Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich left the Republican race.
With 155 delegates at stake, an easy win for Romney in Texas should push him over the top as the centre-right opposition candidate to face President Barack Obama in the November general elections.
The months of state-by-state primaries award delegates to the party convention, where delegates choose the party's candidate.
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