MIAMI — Florida Democrats overwhelmingly say they should get to help pick the presidential nominee, with one in four voters warning in a new Miami Herald poll that they're less likely to support the party in November if the state is shut out.

Eighty-nine percent of Democratic voters say it is important that Florida's delegates count. The national Democratic Party stripped Florida and Michigan of delegates to the nominating convention because they held unauthorized early primaries. A record-setting number of Florida Democrats — more than 1.7 million — went to the polls on Jan. 29 anyway.

As neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama has enough delegates to claim the nomination, the absence of the two big states from the scoreboard has been fiercely debated. Florida Democrats are divided over potential remedies, but a plurality say the national party should recognize Clinton's victory in the Jan. 29 primary.

"Our votes ought to count and should count," said Mary Buckley, 81, a poll respondent from northeast Miami-Dade. "I was hearing back in January that it might not, but I was hoping against hope that it would."

Buckley, a faithful voter and an Obama supporter, said she's not certain how Florida's delegates should be awarded to the candidates.

"That's the $64,000 question," she said. "But my vote was wasted if it doesn't count. I've never voted before that it wasn't counted."

Schroth, Eldon & Associates surveyed 600 registered and frequent Democratic voters Saturday through Monday for The Miami Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and Bay News 9. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

With the state party's decision Monday not to go through with a proposed mail-in vote, Florida could be the only state left out of the epic battle between Clinton and Obama, though a proposal for a do-over election in Michigan appeared to be hitting opposition on Tuesday.

Twenty-four percent of Florida Democrats said that if the state doesn't have a say, they would be less likely to support the Democratic nominee. That's the state's best argument for convincing the National Democratic Committee, led by Howard Dean, to show mercy.

In a state that decided the 2000 presidency by 537 votes, "any percent is going to be significant there," pollster Tom Eldon said. "There's little room for margin of error on either side in the state."

Adding that it could spell a redux of the 2000 presidential recount, he quipped, "If that happens, Howard Dean will be the new Ralph Nader," referring to the independent candidate blamed for Democrat Al Gore's loss.

Florida Democratic Party chairwoman Karen Thurman cited similar results from a party poll last week in an appeal to the national party, saying the Democratic poll found that just 63 percent of Democrats would stick with the nominee if Florida isn't counted — a number she called "dangerously low."

In the Herald poll, 44 percent of voters favor counting the Jan. 29 results, with twice as many Clinton supporters as Obama supporters in that camp. If the national party reversed its decision to exclude Florida, Clinton would net 38 delegates in Florida, allowing her to narrow but not close the 100-plus delegate gap with Obama.

Only 8 percent favor holding another vote-by-mail ballot, suggesting the state party made the right call to scrap that idea. The rest of the respondents were split between holding a traditional election, dividing the delegates evenly between Clinton and Obama, and battling it out at the August convention in Denver.

Most voters — 56 percent — said the candidates' decision to boycott the state before the primary did not affect their ability to make an informed decision when they voted, defying the argument made by Obama supporters that the Jan. 29 primary shouldn't count because no candidates had campaigned in the state.

"The people we spoke to who went to vote on Jan. 29 did not feel they were encumbered by the fact that national candidates had not campaigned in the state... . They felt local news covered the national campaign well enough and that they felt ready to make a decision," Eldon said.

Clinton would still win Florida if another primary were held today, but Obama has gained ground the past six weeks. The poll put him nine points behind Clinton, who leads 46 to 37 percent. She won the Jan. 29 primary 50 to 33 percent.

In the poll, Clinton was more popular among women, white and Hispanic voters, and she fared better than Obama in the southwest, Tampa Bay and central parts of the state. Obama captured an overwhelming 74 percent of the black vote, and he was stronger than Clinton among voters under 50 years old.

Exactly half the voters said both candidates should be on the ticket in November, with the loser of the primary as the vice presidential candidate. Slightly more than half of the voters say the nominating process has hurt the party.

Voters were divided on who to blame for the debacle. The biggest chunk — 28 percent — holds the Republican leadership of the Florida Legislature responsible, even though Democrats overwhelmingly supported the legislation moving up the primary date. Twenty-five percent blame DNC chief Dean, while 20 percent point to the Florida Democratic Party.

Voters were split when asked whether their main motivation for voting on Jan. 29 was the presidential primary or the property tax referendum.