WASHINGTON (AP) – Republican Sen. John McCain won a big victory in the Republican delegate race over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Super Tuesday, extending his lead by capturing nearly all the delegates in California.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton held onto a relatively small lead over Sen. Barack Obama. However, there were still outstanding delegates to be awarded in Illinois and Georgia, where Obama fared well.

McCain won 601 delegates to 200 for Romney and 147 for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in incomplete results. A total of 1,023 delegates were up for grabs in 21 states.

Overall, McCain led with 703 delegates, to 293 for Romney and 190 for Huckabee. It takes 1,191 to win the nomination at this summer’s convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Clinton led with 763 Super Tuesday delegates to Obama’s 731. In Missouri, the race was so close the two candidates split the state’s 72 delegates evenly.

A total of 1,681 delegates were at stake in 22 states and American Samoa.

Overall, Clinton has 1,024 delegates, to 933 for Obama with 2,025 delegates required to claim the nomination in Denver at this summer’s convention.

Obama easily beat Clinton in the Illinois primary, but figures compiled by The Associated Press show she won at least 37 delegates compared to 72 for Obama. The remaining 44 delegates still were up in the air, so both candidates will see their totals grow.

Obama’s campaign claimed late Tuesday that he captured 110 Illinois delegates, while Clinton got 43 — numbers that haven’t been verified by the AP. Clinton’s campaign estimated the split was 102-51.

Clinton was undoubtedly happy with the results after spending no money in Illinois, said Kenneth Janda, professor emeritus of political science at Northwestern University.

“She’s thinking, ‘I didn’t spend a dime and I got about a third of the delegates,'” Janda said.

McCain picked up 54 Illinois delegates, while Mitt Romney got two. One delegate still was undecided.

The AP tracks the delegate races by projecting the number of national convention delegates won by candidates in each presidential primary or caucus, based on state and national party rules, and by interviewing unpledged delegates to obtain their preferences.

In some states, like Iowa and Nevada, local precinct caucuses are the first stage in the allocation process. The AP uses preferences expressed in those caucuses to project the number of national convention delegates each candidate will have when they are chosen at county, congressional district or state conventions.

Of the 153 Democratic delegates in Illinois, 100 are chosen directly by the voters and 53 are appointed by the party based on election results. It’s not an exact science in part because allocating some of the voter-chosen delegates depends on results within Illinois’ 19 congressional districts.

The GOP, meanwhile, does not use statewide results to choose its 57 delegates. They are determined solely by how many votes each delegate — not a presidential candidate — receives in each district.

In the 3rd Congressional District, Clinton and Obama basically split the vote and each ended up with three delegates. In the 4th District, Clinton actually beat Obama 56 percent to 42 percent but the intricacies of the delegate system mean they still got the same number of delegates — two each, AP figures show.

Because Obama won the statewide vote by large margins, he’ll get most of the 53 who are determined by statewide results.

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Associated Press reporter Christopher Wills contributed to this report from Chicago.