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Sen. Hillary Clinton maintained her lead over Sen. Barack Obama as the last precincts were counted today in the state's presidential caucus.

Now, Democratic Party of New Mexico officials will begin tallying more than 17,000 provisional ballots to determine a winner, a process that could take days.

With all 184 precincts reporting, Clinton leads Obama by 1,123 votes — 68,654-67,531 — according to preliminary results posted on the state Democratic Party's Web site.

New Mexico is the only one of 22 states that held Democratic primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday yet to report a winner.

The examination of the provisional ballots will be closed to the news media but will be attended by representatives from the Obama and Clinton campaigns, party officials said.

Provisional ballots are given to voters who show up to the wrong site, whose names are not on registered voter lists provided by the state or who requested an absentee ballot but signed an affidavit saying they did not return it.

Democratic Party Chairman Brian Colón said 17,077 provisional ballots were cast, about 12 percent of the total.

When the provisional count is done, it might mean a gain of only a few delegates for the winning candidate. Unlike some states in which the winner takes all the delegates, 26 of New Mexico's 38 delegates to the Democratic National Convention will be divided between the top caucus vote-getters. The remaining 12 superdelegates are not bound by caucus results.

As of Wednesday, Clinton had 13 delegates in her column while Obama had 12.

The caucus, which was run by the state's Democratic Party, was riddled with trouble. Reports came in from across the state of exasperated voters waiting in lines for up to three hours and polling sites running short of ballots.

Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson said he was "deeply disturbed" by problems and long lines at caucus sites, where volunteer workers were overwhelmed by greater-than-expected turnout.

"As this very close election shows, every vote is important, and every vote must count. Anything less is unacceptable. In addition, the delay in results was extremely disappointing," said Richardson, himself a candidate for the nomination until dropping out in January.

Colón said he took responsibility for the problems.

"We absolutely miscalculated, and I apologize," he said.

Mara Lee, state director for the Clinton campaign, said hundreds of people had called a campaign hot line to voice concerns about the caucus. Lee said the state party was unprepared.

"My concern is mostly that the party system broke down yesterday, and I don't want New Mexicans to be punished," Lee said.

Some said the snail's pace of declaring a winner in New Mexico is not unusual.

"As we got more and more results in, it seemed to get tighter and tighter, and that's not an anomaly in elections in New Mexico," said Laura E. Sanchez, executive director of the state Democratic Party. "We saw that in 2004. We saw that in 2000."

Lonna Atkeson, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico who planned to observe the provisional ballot verification process, predicted a drawn-out wait.

"Our state is so competitive at a federal level that we have to count the votes, and we have to count them by hand, and we have to verify voters, and that's time-consuming, especially on the provisionals," she said.

Associated Press writers Felicia Fonseca and Barry Massey contributed to this report.