With a victory in Wyoming yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama got a boost in his efforts to regain momentum after a rough week that included controversies involving two of his top advisers and losses in three states.

The Democratic caucus win propels him on to Mississippi, where he is favored in Tuesday's primary there. "This is a big win for us," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager.

But big is a relative term. Less than 9,000 Democrats took part in the caucuses in Wyoming, the nation's least populated state, which is home to only about 59,000 registered Democrats.

Obama, of Illinois, beat Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., 61 percent to 38 percent, in a contest that most assumed would be irrelevant just a few weeks ago.

Clinton's campaign, meanwhile, sought to downplay the outcome, making the point that both candidates will gain roughly the same number of delegates because of the proportional way Democrats award them.

"We are thrilled with this near split in delegates and are grateful to the people of Wyoming for their support," Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams said in a statement.

The heavily Republican state will send only 12 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer, with seven projected to go to Obama and five to Clinton.

But with an intense delegate battle under way, every state and delegate matters.

The debate about how to deal with delegates from Michigan and Florida also persisted yesterday. Earlier primaries in those states are, for now, meaningless because the states violated Democratic National Committee rules.

Officials in the two states are toying with redoing their contests. One option being considered in Michigan is a so-called firehouse primary, which would allow Democrats to cast their ballots again before June.

Plouffe disputed a report in yesterday Detroit Free Press that said Obama's campaign told the state's top party official that it would not accept Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm's idea of a party sponsored primary.

"That report was not accurate," he said. "We have abided by the DNC rules to this date and will continue to abide by them. So, if there is a remedy that the DNC and state parties agree to, that meets the rules ... we will abide by those."

But Plouffe said he does not think the two campaigns should be involved with the negotiations.

"If there is a re-vote approved by the DNC, obviously we're going to abide by that," he said. "We are not going to pick and choose what kind of contest is appropriate to us. We would like resolution of this and we'd like resolution of this quickly ... so that we have some certainty of what the nomination fight is going to look like."