Clinton, Obama Split States in Super Tuesday Contests (Update6)
By Kristin Jensen and Ken Fireman
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Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama split victories on the biggest day of voting in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Clinton won Arkansas, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Tennessee, while Obama took Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, North Dakota and Utah, according to projections from television networks and the Associated Press.
Voters in 22 states participated in today's Democratic nominating contests; results are still being tallied. New York, Illinois and California are among the day's biggest prizes, though a candidate can take a portion of the delegates in any state without winning the contest there outright.
With the vote so closely matched, officials in both campaigns say they expect the battle for the nomination to extend beyond today's Super Tuesday balloting. Obama, an Illinois senator, and Clinton, a New York senator, had each won two of the four contested elections before today.
Obama, 46, who is vying to become the nation's first black president, was doing the best among African-American voters, men and voters under the age of 50, according to exit polls cited by MSNBC.
Obama got 80 percent of the black vote nationwide, compared with 17 percent for Clinton, according to the exit polls. Among whites, Clinton led 51 percent to 44 percent. Obama got 53 percent of men to Clinton's 42 percent. Clinton led among women who made up 57 percent of Democratic voters today, 51 percent to 46 percent, MSNBC said.
Latest Polls
Clinton, 60, was leading in polls of voters in most Feb. 5 states until Obama won a landslide victory in South Carolina on Jan. 26. In recent days, Obama, 46, had closed the gap with Clinton in a number of states or moved ahead; the two are also deadlocked in national polls.
Georgia was the first state to finish voting tonight, and Obama led there with 62 percent of the vote, compared with 35 percent for Clinton, with 70 percent of precincts reporting. About half the state's Democratic voters are black.
The Clinton campaign trumpeted its projected win in Massachusetts, where Governor Deval Patrick and Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry backed Obama. Clinton led in the state with 57 percent of the vote, compared with 40 percent for Obama, with 52 percent of precincts reporting.
`Big Deal'
The Massachusetts win was ``a very big deal,'' said Clinton spokesman Jay Carson. ``What we've seen tonight is what we've been predicting -- this is going to be a very close election,'' Carson said. ``There's a long way to go before we're going to have a nominee.''
Obama and Clinton were essentially tied in a poll of California voters released as balloting began there. The state's large population of Hispanic voters may help Clinton; exit polls cited by MSNBC showed that she was winning 61 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide.
Clinton's campaign was already looking beyond today. Her top adviser earlier today called for weekly debates with Obama until March 4, when nominating contests are held in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont. Obama hasn't ruled out debates as the primary battle continues, said David Plouffe, his campaign manager.
A candidate needs 2,025 votes at the Democratic convention in August to win the nomination and Obama was leading in the number of delegates elected through primaries and caucuses. Before today, he had 63 to Clinton's 48, according to The Green Papers, a nonpartisan Web site that compiles election statistics.
Super Delegates
Clinton has an edge among so-called super delegates, Democratic officeholders and party officials who get a vote at the convention and aren't bound by election results. Coming into today, Clinton had 190 of those delegates in her corner, compared with 104 for Obama, according to The Green Papers.
``We expect to maintain our current overall lead in delegates on Feb. 6,'' Howard Wolfson, a top Clinton adviser, told reporters on a conference call yesterday. Wolfson predicted that the current round of voting would be ``inconclusive'' in singling out a front-runner for the nomination.
Plouffe, meanwhile, sent a memo yesterday to reporters saying he expected Clinton to still win California and a larger share of delegates because of ``her huge head start'' among the Super Tuesday states. ``If we were to be within 100 delegates on that day and win a number of states, we will have met our threshold for success,'' Plouffe said.
Obama won the first contest of the nominating race, with a victory in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Clinton then won the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary and Jan. 19 Nevada caucuses.
To contact the reporters on this story: Kristin Jensen in Washington at kjensen@bloomberg.net ; Ken Fireman in Washington at Kfireman1@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: February 5, 2008 22:23 EST
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