Washington —- Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will spend the next six weeks campaigning in states that are irrelevant to their November strategies, a break for Republican John McCain as he focuses on battlegrounds for the fall.

The time that Obama and Clinton will devote to these states is another price of their protracted primary battle, which already has consumed millions of campaign dollars and hurt their images as they batter each other —- without McCain lifting a finger.

Democratic leaders who set the election calendar assumed their nominee would have been decided by early February.

The survivor could have spent the spring shoring up the party's base and concentrating on the GOP opponent in the roughly 14 competitive states that will decide the next president.

That person certainly would not have spent April and May campaigning in Indiana, Kentucky, Montana and South Dakota. North Carolina probably would have been avoided, too.

Those states went solidly Republican in recent presidential elections, and Democratic strategists don't list them among the ones they need to win in November. Yet Obama and Clinton will spend weeks and big sums of money in those states as they try to end a nominating process that both say will last until June 3 or later.

Of the seven states yet to hold Democratic primaries (Guam and Puerto Rico also have contests), only Oregon and West Virginia rank among those that both parties see as true battlegrounds worthy of each campaign's time and money in the fall. Obama and Clinton can consider their time spent in those two states as a good investment for November.

But it's hard to make that argument in the other five.

Obama's camp tried to find a silver lining in his nearly 10-point loss Tuesday to Clinton in Pennsylvania. If Obama becomes the nominee, the time and money he spent there in March and April will serve him well this fall, when McCain is expected to compete in the state, said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager.

Obama, who has more delegates and popular votes than Clinton, would like to put North Carolina and Montana into play if he is the nominee. The campaign wants "to stretch the playing field" in the general election by trying for victories in states that Republicans usually take for granted, Plouffe said last week.

But barring big upsets elsewhere, a Democrat who carries North Carolina and Montana in November already would have secured a comfortable victory, and the two states would amount to icing on the cake.

Democrats in the GOP-leaning states are delighted by the enthusiasm the Obama-Clinton contest is bringing their way, triggering record voter registration and fund-raising levels. In North Carolina, for example, both parties are holding contested gubernatorial primaries on May 6, but the Republican contest "is practically invisible," said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"All the energy is on the Democratic side," Guillory said.

It's true that North Carolina and Indiana "are not states that generally go for the Democrats" in presidential elections and are therefore places that would be low priorities for the party in April under most circumstances, said Chris LaCivita, a Republican consultant based in Richmond.

But Obama and Clinton "are both bringing in more voters" in those states and elsewhere who can help the Democratic Party elect House members, senators and other officials in November, he said.

SOLID GOP STATES

President Bush easily won six of the seven states where Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will spend the next several weeks campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. Percentages Bush and Democrat John Kerry received in 2004 in states yet to hold their 2008 primaries:

> Indiana (May 6): Bush 60 percent, Kerry 39 percent

> North Carolina (May 6): Bush 56 percent, Kerry 44 percent

> West Virginia (May 13): Bush 56 percent, Kerry 43 percent

> Kentucky (May 20): Bush 60 percent, Kerry 40 percent

> Oregon (May 20): Kerry 51 percent, Bush 47 percent

> Montana (June 3): Bush 59 percent, Kerry 39 percent

> South Dakota (June 3): Bush 60 percent, Kerry 38 percent

—-Associated Press