Foreign Policy Hits Home in Tex., Ohio

In addition to Ohio and Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont will hold primaries Tuesday, with a total of 370 pledged delegates at stake, the second-biggest delegate day of the year. Clinton is favored in Rhode Island, and Obama in Vermont. But those states are bit players in a competition that remains focused on Ohio and Texas.

All indications point to another day of potentially record turnout. In Texas, participation in early voting is 10 times higher than it was four years ago in a number of the state's biggest counties. In Ohio, the secretary of state has predicted that just over half the electorate may vote.

Strategists in both campaigns have been combing the early-vote data in Texas for clues to who may have the advantage, and both have found reasons for optimism. Obama's team sees big turnout among blacks in Houston and Dallas, and sizable increases in some Republican-dominated counties suggest that Obama may be pulling independents into the Democratic primary.

Clinton's camp is buoyed by signs of a big early vote in the heavily Hispanic counties of South Texas and by the fact that almost 60 percent of the early voters were women. Her ringing-phone ad, which includes images of sleeping children and a worried mother, is aimed at reminding women of the national security stakes in their votes Tuesday.

Clinton has deep roots in the Lone Star State, and they gave her an early lead, but Obama is tapping into a younger generation of Texans, some of whom are in the forefront of bringing back the Democratic Party after more than two decades of Republican ascendance.

"Texas should have been a pretty easy play for Clinton," said one strategist with wide experience in the state who spoke on the condition of anonymity to analyze the race candidly. "But it's true that those relationships that had been built went stale. . . . The reemergence of Democrats in Texas -- it obviously has a long way to go -- the people who are participating in it were never really part of Clinton's world."

The popular vote in Texas could go either way, according to Obama and Clinton strategists, but Obama may have an advantage in the delegate battle. That's because of the quirks in the distribution of delegates -- some of the districts that will award the most delegates are demographically more favorable to Obama -- as well as the split primary-caucus structure of the Texas vote.

Texas will hold a traditional primary Tuesday, and then, once the polls close, conduct caucuses at 8,000 sites. Obama has demonstrated organizational superiority in most of the earlier caucuses and expects to do the same this week. But Clinton's team has worked to organize Texas more energetically than it has some previous caucus states.

In Ohio, Clinton has maintained a small, single-digit lead in public polls in a campaign dominated by economic issues. Her team decided not to air its ringing-phone ad in Ohio because voters here are so focused on the economy. The key to victory may be whether Obama can undermine Clinton's traditional strength with blue-collar voters.

Clinton has the support of Gov. Ted Strickland and former senator John Glenn, both of whom are featured in her ads. Obama is strong in the major cities. Clinton hopes to establish her margins in rural areas and in economically hard-hit northeast Ohio.

The candidates have saturated Ohio TV screens with ads. Two big unions, the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers, also have made major buys supporting Obama. A Clinton official estimated that the Obama forces are outspending them by 4 to 1 in the state on television.

Staff writers Anne E. Kornblut with Clinton and Shailagh Murray with Obama contributed to this report.