Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama dueled across a 22-state landscape Tuesday, with each scoring early victories in big states and waging too-close-to-call contests in others in their fierce battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Even before the polls closed, officials from both campaigns predicted that neither would emerge with an insurmountable lead in delegates and said that the contest would continue into March and possibly beyond.
Obama won big victories in his home state of Illinois and in Alabama and Georgia, the largest Southern state in play Tuesday. But Clinton countered by carrying her New York home base, picking up California and New Jersey, and scoring clean wins in Tennessee, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
She also took Massachusetts, where Obama had the support of the state’s three leading elected officials, including Sen. Edward Kennedy and Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee.
Obama and Clinton were fighting not only for state-by-state victories, but also for the edge in the nearly 1,700 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday. Their battle has already seen momentum shift back and forth during the first month of competition, and Tuesday’s multistate battle was expected to play an important role in shaping what has become the most competitive Democratic race in at least a quarter of a century.
Just how close the margin will be in delegate tallies will not be known until all the votes are counted today.
Obama carried Georgia on the strength of overwhelming support from blacks but also nearly four in 10 white voters, according to exit polls from the National Election Pool.
Clinton won Tennessee and Massachusetts with strong support from female voters, who remain her most important strength. In both states, women made up more than half of the Democratic electorates, and Clinton won more than half of their votes.
There will be 4,049 delegates attending the national convention; a candidate needs 2,025 to secure the nomination. Of that total, 3,253 are pledged delegates, which means their votes are determined by the caucus or primary results in their state. The remainder are superdelegates, generally party officials, members of Congress and other elected officials who are free to vote for whomever they prefer.
Going into Tuesday’s balloting, Obama had 63 delegates to Clinton’s 48 in the first four party-sanctioned contests of the year — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Clinton held a lead among superdelegates. Various news organizations count the distribution of superdelegates differently, but Clinton is widely agreed to lead Obama by a margin of about 90.
Throughout the day, Clinton advisers worked to play down expectations. Even before any polling stations were closed, chief strategist Mark Penn and senior adviser Howard Wolfson held a conference call to announce that Clinton had agreed to a series of debates between now and the March 4 primaries and invited Obama to join her.
Doubting that they would be able to pull off a decisive victory on Tuesday — and with a slate of races in the weeks ahead that they believe will skew in Obama’s favor — the Clinton campaign is now banking on doing well in Texas and Ohio on March 4.
Penn said Clinton would participate in an ABC News debate on Sunday, a Fox News debate Monday in Washington, a Feb. 27 CNN debate in Ohio and a Feb. 28 MSNBC debate in Houston.
Obama advisers declined to commit to a new round of debates. “We’re obviously going to set our schedule to include debates, and there will be more debates,” campaign manager David Plouffe said. “But our schedule is not going to be from a second-tier congressional campaign playbook.”
Clinton advisers rejected the notion that proposing debates signaled growing concern about the course of the race on their part. “We’ve been debating for a year and a half. Why would now be any different?” Wolfson said.
It is unclear whether Clinton will compete actively in some of the contests immediately ahead, including Washington state caucuses on Saturday.
Plouffe also sought to set expectations by predicting a draw by the end of the night.
Looking ahead, the Obama campaign expects the next week to bring a string of victories, and it is seeking to grow its support among superdelegates.
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