The beleaguered campaign of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, grasping for votes and media attention, yesterday raised the prospect of a deadlocked Democratic National Convention turning to the candidate who began the nomination contest with four straight losses.

In a conference call with reporters, Edwards strategists insisted that neither of the front-running Democrats is likely to gain enough pledged delegates to ensure nomination before the Democrats convene in August.

Jonathan Prince, Mr. Edwards' deputy campaign manager, noted that only about 80 percent of the 4,049 delegates will be captured and pledged to winning candidates in the primaries and caucuses. The balance are so-called "superdelegates" -- elected and party officials who are free to switch their allegiance among candidates at any point.

"One candidate would need [to win] 60 percent of the elected delegates" to lock up the nomination, a goal Mr. Prince called "essentially impossible in a three-person race."

He sketched what he described as a "worst-case scenario" for the Edwards campaign, in which the former North Carolina lawmaker would go to Denver with between 20 percent and 25 percent of the pledged delegates, while New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama would have somewhere between 35 percent and 40 percent each.

Mr. Prince speculated further that the delegates might be assembling amid public poll numbers depicting Mr. Edwards as the strongest Democratic candidate facing the Republican choice in November. "You're in brokered convention land," he said.

Mr. Edwards and his strategists insist that the Democratic nomination quest will remain a three-person race. But the challenge of making it one in any meaningful way has become progressively more difficult with every successive Edwards loss. None was more damaging to that perception battle than Saturday's third-place finish in South Carolina, the state of his birth and one that he captured in 2004.

But the Edwards officials insisted that a deadlocked convention was not essential to revive their candidate's chances of winning the nomination. They maintained that their fundraising was going well, and that they would be in position to win delegates all over the country in the Feb. 5 mega-primary and in states beyond.

Former Michigan Rep. David Bonior, the campaign manager, said Mr. Edwards had the resources for an "aggressive media buy" in 10 of the 22 states choosing delegates next week.

Joe Trippi, another senior strategist, predicted that Mr. Edwards' performance in upcoming debates would help broaden a media focus increasingly concentrated on the two candidates who have split the wins in the four contests held to date.

"Debates are our friend," Mr. Trippi said. "John has consistently outperformed both of the other candidates."

Mr. Bonior also predicted an upward trajectory for his candidate: "As we saw in South Carolina, once people have a chance to hear directly from John Edwards, the numbers move."

But they didn't move far enough, as Mr. Edwards received a mere 15 percent of Democratic support in his own back yard. Even while losing in a landslide to Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton nearly doubled the Edwards total.