Obama, Clinton duel to a draw on Super Tuesday

He won more states; she won more big states and a few more delegates. Battle to last through March at least, analysts say.

posted February 6, 2008 at 6:58 am EST

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Each side could – and did – claim some bragging rights Tuesday. Clinton beat back Obama's eleventh-hour surge in the polls in California and New Jersey, and demonstrated a near lock on Latino voters, nearly 70 percent of whom voted for her in California. Latinos will play an important role again in delegate-loaded Texas on March 4.

Obama proved he could win "red states" that will be battlegrounds in the general election and made advances with two groups of voters normally in Clinton's column: women and whites. He still trailed Clinton in those groups Tuesday but by slimmer margins than in past contests, according to exit polls.

In addition, Obama pulled even with Clinton among white men, a step up from earlier contests, and kept up a winning streak with whites younger than 40, underscoring a sharp cross-racial generational divide between supporters of the two candidates.

"Hillary can say, 'A week ago, it seemed like the momentum was strong for Barack Obama, so we did better than expected,' " says Robert Sahr, a political scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "Barack Obama can say, 'Look, a month ago we were behind essentially everywhere, and tonight we won [about as much as] they won.' "

Analysts say Obama's chances at winning the nomination will hinge on his ability to make further advances with white and older voters.

Clinton's victory in Massachusetts was a setback for Obama, who was endorsed by Gov. Deval Patrick and two local political figures with national firepower: Sen. Edward Kennedy, the elder statesman of the Kennedy dynasty, and Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.

Obama narrowly won the city of Boston, but exit polls showed that Clinton carried the state with the support of women, older and lower-income voters, many in working-class cities like Worcester and Fall River. Obama's defeat in Massachusetts raises questions about the influence of Kennedy's endorsement elsewhere.

Obama also denied Clinton a sweep of states neighboring New York with his victory in Connecticut, where Clinton held a 13 percentage point lead in the polls as recently as late January.

Analysts partly credited Obama's win to the state's well-to-do population and the same antiwar sentiment that led to Joseph Lieberman's defeat in the Democratic primary for Senate in 2006. (Senator Lieberman, who was reelected that year as an independent, drew favorable ratings from just one-third of Connecticut's Democratic voters in exit polls Tuesday.)

"Given Clinton's vote to authorize the war, Connecticut is one of the states where I would have looked for an antiwar backlash," says Kenneth Sherrill, a political scientist at Hunter College in New York. "This is a cohort of the Democratic Party that's really unforgiving on the war."

Surveys of voters leaving the polls reinforced some long-running trends, including Clinton's strong support among women and Obama's among blacks. Clinton remained the choice of voters seeking experience, and Obama the favorite of voters wanting change.

But it also pointed up some striking new ones. In California, Clinton picked up about three-quarters of the Asian vote. Asians will play a role again in the Feb. 19 caucus in Hawaii, where Obama was born and spent part of his childhood. Another finding was that while Jews in New York backed Clinton 2 to 1, Jews in Massachusetts narrowly supported Obama.

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