Clinton Has Edge in Ohio; Race in Texas Deadlocked

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Obama, Clinton Face Off

Barack Obama is drawing huge Texan crowds while Hillary Clinton tries to stop his momentum. Bill Clinton says Hillary needs wins in Texas and Ohio to be the Democratic nominee. Jim Axelrod reports.

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The two candidates run about evenly as the one more in touch with "people like you."

On the issues, Clinton has big head-to-head leads on handling the economy and health care, while the two are more closely matched on dealing with the war in Iraq and immigration.

Obama campaign officials have argued that victories in Texas and Ohio alone would not be enough to put Clinton on a path to the nomination. Given Obama's lead among pledged delegates, now in the neighborhood of 150, Clinton would need big wins to make real gains in the delegate count, because of Democratic Party rules that award delegates proportionally on the basis of the popular vote.

The Texas system in particular, which includes both a primary and caucuses on the same day, may benefit Obama, who has excelled in previous caucuses. Given the closeness of the race, that system will make it all the more difficult for Clinton to come out of the state with a big gain in the overall delegate battle.

But Clinton campaign officials counter that victories for her in Ohio and Texas would seed doubts about Obama because he would by then have lost the vast majority of the most populous states that have voted. The Clinton camp hopes such doubts would prompt the superdelegates -- members of Congress, governors and party officials who have automatic voting rights at the convention and who may hold the balance of power in the nominating battle -- to rethink the race.

The demographic contours of the two upcoming contests provide insights into what each candidate needs to do over the next two weeks to win.

Clinton holds sizable leads in Ohio and Texas among white women -- 17 percentage points in Texas and a whopping 35 points in Ohio. She is doing well among white men in Ohio as well, leading Obama by 12 percentage points in that group. In Texas, Obama leads among white men by 10 points. If Obama were to stay stuck at 40 percent among white men in Ohio, it would be one of his worst showings among those voters since Super Tuesday.

Seniors break for Clinton by wide margins in both states; Obama's only win so far among older voters was in Virginia, according to network exit polls.

Obama has overwhelming leads, roughly 4 to 1, among black voters in both states. But Clinton has solid support in the Hispanic community in Texas, leading Obama by about 20 percentage points among a group of voters who proved crucial in her victories in California and other Super Tuesday states.

Clinton is seeking to hold two other core groups in her once-strong coalition -- less-educated, lower-income white voters and self-identified Democrats. By focusing on the economy, particularly in Ohio, she hopes to prevent the kind of shift to Obama seen in Wisconsin on Tuesday.

The Post-ABC News polls show her with wide leads among white voters with annual family incomes under $50,000 in both states, and with a 16-point advantage among those from union households in Ohio. She leads Obama by 11 points among white voters in Texas who do not have a college degree and by 38 points among those voters in Ohio. Obama will need to cut into that margin in Ohio if he hopes to overtake Clinton there.

Independents lifted Obama to many of his early victories, but he has also carried the support of mainline Democrats since Super Tuesday. These new polls, however, show Clinton leading Obama by double-digit margins among Democrats. Both Ohio and Texas hold open primaries, in which any registered voter may cast a ballot.

The polls were conducted by telephone Feb. 16 to 20, among random samples of 611 Ohio adults and 603 Texas adults likely to participate in the Democratic primaries in those states. Sampling-error margins are plus or minus four percentage points for the full samples; error margins are larger for subgroups.

Cohen reported from Washington. Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta in Washington contributed to this report.