Local voters may have cast their ballots last week, but the race for Napa County’s Democratic delegates is still on.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., looked likely on Tuesday to win Napa County’s congressional district delegates, but only tens of thousands of last-minute ballots will tell for sure. The outcome won’t be certain until early next month, when the results from the Feb. 5 primary are certified by the state.

The race for the First Congressional District is razor thin, Napa County Registrar of Voters John Tuteur said. Uncounted paper ballots from Napa, Del Norte, Sonoma, Humboldt, Lake, Yolo and Mendocino counties could provide a win for either Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

In Napa alone, Tuteur said, there are still 14,000 ballots to count, including Republican Party ballots, which don’t affect the Democratic primary.

Those ballots are statistically unlikely to change the outcome of local races, he said. But with Obama leading Clinton by only 450 votes in the congressional district — or 0.4 percent of the vote — tens of thousands of potentially uncounted votes leave the race for Democratic delegates up for grabs.

“A lot of people are saying their ballots don’t count if it’s not counted on election day,” Tuteur said. “That’s not true. It’s not all over until its over.”

According to Kim Stevens, a spokeswoman for the California Democratic Party, the 1st Congressional District has five regular Democratic delegates and is the home of one so-called superdelegate, Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena.

Voting delegates are assigned based on the popular vote, depending on how many votes each candidate gets. The more votes, the more delegates.

The Democratic superdelegates don’t have to abide by the will of Democratic voters. They are usually members of Congress or Democratic Party officials, such as Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean or former President Bill Clinton.

Hundreds of superdelegates have already indicated who they plan to vote for. Thompson has already said he will endorse Clinton. Thompson’s office did not respond to a question of whether he would change his endorsement if voters in his congressional district choose Obama.

With the likely national delegate count for each candidate projected to place the two candidates in a dead heat, the party’s 796 superdelegates will play a critical role in selecting the party nominee. Press reports show that both campaigns are lobbying hard to win over undeclared superdelegates.

So far Clinton has more than 200 while Obama has around 130, but with the number of superdelegates declaring allegiances changing each day — sometimes drastically — it’s anyone’s nomination.