Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, digging in for a delegate-by-delegate fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, returned to Washington on Wednesday with plans to make Tuesday’s Virginia primary a major battleground.

Strategists in both campaigns had once regarded Obama, D-Ill, as well-positioned to sweep Virginia, Maryland and Washington in next week’s first-ever regional primary. All three jurisdictions are rich in the African-American, upper-income and independent voters who have sustained his campaign.

But advisers to Clinton, D-N.Y., are now mapping out a strategy that does not exclude Maryland and Washington but focuses heavily on fast-growing outer suburbs such as Prince William and Loudoun counties in Northern Virginia and the state’s economically struggling rural southwest, where unemployment is high among white working-class voters.

Clinton, who is scheduled to meet students at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington County on Thursday afternoon, said she is moving “full speed ahead” into the Washington region. Her appearance is part of increasingly frenetic campaigning by candidates in both parties in the area, where the first significant wave of votes since the inconclusive Super Tuesday primaries will be cast.

Obama and Clinton have committed to attending Saturday’s Jefferson-Jackson Democratic dinner in Richmond. On the GOP side, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Sen John McCain of Arizona are scheduled to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday in Washington. Romney is expected to appear at a Republican dinner in Baltimore County this evening.

But it is Virginia that is expected to be the most heavily contested turf over the next six days in what has been variously dubbed the Potomac, Chesapeake or Beltway primary.

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