Clinton Handily Defeats Obama in West Virginia

Video

Clinton: 'More Determined to Carry on Campaign'

Hillary Clinton gave no indication she's dropping out of the race for president Tuesday, after winning West Virginia easily. Clinton reiterated her desire to have the delegates from Michigan and Florida counted in the final delegate count.

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds responded by saying that, while preaching change, Obama is pursuing old-style partisan politics. "Senator Obama offers nothing more than the soaring rhetoric of an old-style, partisan politician, and his lack of experience suggests that's all he'll be able to deliver," he said in a statement.

Heading into yesterday's primary, the Associated Press delegate count had Obama at 1,875 to Clinton's 1,697, a lead of 178 delegates. The winner will need 2,025 delegates to capture the nomination unless a deal is struck to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida, although it is not likely that such a resolution would give Clinton enough extra delegates to affect the nomination race.

Five primaries remain: Oregon and Kentucky next Tuesday, Puerto Rico on June 1, and Montana and South Dakota on June 3. Together, those five contests will award 189 delegates.

Before last night's results, Obama led not only in pledged delegates but also in states won and in the popular vote. Clinton looked to West Virginia to give her a big margin in the popular vote with the hope of overtaking Obama in that measurement by the end of the primaries.

Clinton once had hoped to narrow Obama's pledged-delegate lead to below 100 by the end of the primaries and then looked to capture enough of the uncommitted superdelegates to emerge with the nomination. That seems out of reach at this point.

Even if Clinton were to win the remaining five contests with 65 percent of the vote, she would still trail by roughly 100 pledged delegates. She is favored to win Kentucky and Puerto Rico, and Obama is favored in Oregon, Montana and South Dakota.

Instead, Obama is prepared to claim a majority of the pledged delegates after next week's voting. While that falls short of a majority of all delegates, many superdelegates appear unwilling to go against the will of the pledged delegates, a point Obama and his advisers have stressed repeatedly.

Clinton was heavily favored in West Virginia because of the demographics of the state. The population is older, overwhelmingly white, heavily rural, and less affluent and less educated than in some other states.

Clinton has done well in states with similar makeups in most earlier primaries, and exit polls showed that she carried them overwhelmingly yesterday. She outpaced Obama by more than 40 percentage points among those voters without a college degree, for example, but Obama ran more competitively among those with more education.

Broadly these demographic divisions have been evident in other primaries, but the West Virginia exit poll had other, potentially more troubling results for Obama if he hopes to compete in the state in the fall.

Only a narrow majority of Democratic primary voters said they would support Obama in the general election if he were to get the party's nod. Fewer than half called the senator from Illinois honest and trustworthy, and a similarly low number said he is in sync with their values.

The controversy continuing to swirl around Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., appeared to play a role. About half of West Virginia voters said they think Obama shares at least some of Wright's views, and those voters went for Clinton by a margin of nearly 7 to 1.

"This victory ought to give pause to those who are itching to declare the nomination over and done," said Clinton strategist Geoff Garin. "This strengthens the point that we've seen in other states, that Senator Clinton is the best candidate to win tough states and groups of voters who otherwise may be very difficult for Democrats to keep in our column."

Garin said Clinton advisers hope that yesterday's primary will undo some of the impact of North Carolina and Indiana, which dramatically cemented a perception that the Democratic race is nearly over.

"It's our strong view that Senator Clinton did not get enough credit for achieving a come-from-behind victory in Indiana, where Senator Obama had a ton of advantages," he said. "But now the West Virginia victory brings the question of electability back to where it was in the wake of Pennsylvania."

Earlier in the day, Obama and Clinton spent about an hour in the Senate, a rare joint appearance that was far more relaxed than previous sessions in this primary season. At one point, Obama made a beeline for Clinton, tapping her on the shoulder while she was talking to Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.). The two exchanged a few words before Obama returned to mingling with colleagues, cocktail-party style, while Clinton received well-wishers in her corner.

Staff writers Eli Saslow, traveling with Clinton, Peter Slevin, traveling with Obama, and Shailagh Murray in Washington; polling director Jon Cohen; polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta; and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.