Posted by
Cary Wesberry on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 2:35:31 PM
Hillary Clinton, declaring “this race isn’t over yet,” beat Barack Obama by a decisive margin in the West Virginia Democratic primary Tuesday.
Early returns indicated Clinton was beating Obama by better than 2-to-1. She is capturing almost every demographic group, and doing particularly well among the large group of white, working-class voters in the state.
West Virginia offers just 28 pledged delegates, and so Clinton’s victory Tuesday, which was widely expected, will have little impact on the overall trajectory of the race. Obama, leading Clinton by a wide margin in total delegates, has already started turning his campaign toward the general election.
But the Clinton win prolongs the race and fuels the New York senator’s argument that she is able to carry groups that will be important to Democrats in November.
“We know from the Bible that faith can move mountains, and my friends, the faith of the Mountain State has moved me,” Clinton said at her primary rally in Charleston, W. Va. “I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign until everyone has had a chance to make their voices heard … This continues to be a hard-fought race from one end of our country to the other.”
Final West Virginia returns showed Clinton won with 67 percent of the vote, compared with Obama’s 26 percent. John Edwards, who dropped out of the race in January, remained on the ballot and still drew 7 percent.
Cheers of “It’s not over! It’s not over!” broke out at Clinton’s state headquarters in Charleston after the race was called.
Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told FOX News before polls closed that he doesn’t see it as inevitable that Obama will become the Democratic nominee.
“Hillary Clinton is in this to the end, she’ll win this nomination,” he said in the evening, before introducing Clinton to a raucous audience.
This from CNN:
Clinton's victory in West Virginia was decisive. She won men and women. She carried a majority of voters in every age group. She captured liberals, moderates, and conservatives. She took a majority in every income bracket.
Clinton's largest margins, as expected, were registered among voters at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. Among white voters without a college degree, Clinton defeated Obama by 50 points. Among white voters making less than $30,000 a year, Clinton's margin of victory was more than 60 points.
Older voters and white women -- part of Clinton's core constituency -- also rallied strongly to her beleaguered campaign. Voters age 65 and older supported her by a 38-point margin. White women backed her by 51 points.
Clinton's proposal to suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gasoline tax for the summer -- an idea belittled by most economists and rejected by Obama as a political gimmick -- proved to be a winner in West Virginia. Voters supported the gas tax suspension by an almost 2-to-1 margin. Those voters who supported suspending the gas tax broke for Clinton, 74 to 19 percent.
One major warning sign for Democrats could be found in the percentage of Obama and Clinton supporters apparently unwilling to support the opposing candidate. Only 38 percent of Clinton's voters said they would vote for Obama in a general election matchup against presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain. A bare majority (54 percent) of Obama's voters said they would vote for Clinton against McCain.
While Clinton registered an impressive margin of victory in West Virginia, there are serious questions as to whether her victory there will do much to diminish Obama's aura of inevitability. The Illinois senator has benefited from a steady stream of superdelegate endorsements since his win in North Carolina last week. He is edging steadily closer to the 2,025-delegate threshold needed to claim the Democratic nomination.
The Clinton camp is nevertheless likely to seize upon the West Virginia results to press her argument to the dwindling pool of uncommitted superdelegates that she would be the stronger Democratic candidate against McCain in the fall.
Looks like the racist Rev. Wright issue has seriously hurt Obama among white Democrats. Funny, most people regardless of their party won't vote for someone who unapologetically hates them. Who would have thought? Hillary is right about one thing; she has won every swing state and every state required for a Democrat to win the general election.