After the Democratic presidential contenders split the night’s early contests, New York Senator Hillary Clinton won a string of key battleground states, most notably California and many of the northern states, but Illinois Senator Barack Obama nearly matched her with his own series of victories, particularly in the south and midwest. Neither candidate, however, appeared to land a knockout blow.
Clinton showed a large stand in taking New York along with key wins in New Jersey, Missouri, Arizona and Massachusetts as well as Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.
Obama, however, won states with large black voting blocs, such as Georgia, Alabama, and Delaware, while also taking primaries in his home state of Illinois, Utah, and Connecticut in addition to caucuses in North Dakota, Kansas, Minnesota, Idaho, Alaska and Colorado.
Of the 16 states to hold primaries and seven to hold caucuses for the Democrats, Obama took 13 states: primaries in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, and Utah, as well as caucuses in Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
In total, Clinton has racked up 740 delegates while Obama just trails behind with 659.
These results show that there is no clear front-runner and the Clinton-Obama duel will continue for weeks and possibly months. Both campaigns stressed Tuesday night that they were ready to battle later this week in Louisiana and Nebraska, which hold contests Saturday, then on to Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia next Tuesday—and perhaps all the way to the August convention.
Obama countered Clinton’s win in Massachusetts by taking neighboring Connecticut. He also did well in states such as Georgia, where more than half the voting population was African-American and went for him by eight-to-one. He got 39 percent of whites. His appeal also followed another familiar pattern: He won the 18- to 29-year-old vote by 77 to 21 percent.
Obama told cheering supporters in Chicago, “Our time has come. Our movement is real, and change is coming to America.”
Clinton received approximately 54 percent of her votes from women, according to exit polls, also beating Obama two-to-one among Latino voters, who made up 29 percent of the electorate, and she also did well among voters earning less than $50,000 a year.
“We know what we need is someone ready on day one to solve our problems and seize those opportunities,” Clinton said Tuesday. “Because when the bright lights are off and the cameras are gone, who can you count on to listen to you, to stand up for you, to deliver solutions for you?”
While winning statewide popular-vote margins carries more of a representative importance for any candidate, neither Clinton nor Obama appeared to gain a significant advantage from final results in the all-important convention-delegate count because of the Democrats’ complex system of awarding delegates. It takes 2,025 delegates to win the Democratic nomination, and 1,681 were at stake in 22 Super Tuesday contests.
Neither side claimed a decisive victory Tuesday night; both wanted to look ahead to the remaining contests.
