Clinton Secures Pennsylvania Primary

Hillary Clinton brushed past Barack Obama to win the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday in a fierce battle to remain in the Democratic presidential nomination race.

A loss for Clinton would likely have led to the collapse of her cash-strapped campaign for the White House.

She was aiming for a resounding victory to bolster her argument that Obama can’t deliver crucial states in this fall’s election campaign against Republican John McCain.

She was taking 53 per cent of the vote on the strength of support from women, white men and blue-collar workers, compared with 47 per cent for Obama.

Clinton is hoping a win in Pennsylvania will help convince superdelegates — legislators and party insiders who will likely end up deciding the race — that she’s best poised to beat McCain.

“A win is a win,” Clinton said earlier Tuesday. “I don’t think the margin matters.”

“I think maybe the question ought to be: `Why can’t he close the deal with his extraordinary financial advantage?’,” she told reporters.  “The road to Pennsylvania Avenue for a Democrat goes right through Pennsylvania. So I think the burden is on him.”

Obama, who’s been outspending Clinton by more than two to one during an intense, bitter six-week campaign, predicted she would beat him, but not by much.

“It’s an uphill battle,” he said at a Pittsburgh diner. “We think we’ve made enormous progress. A lot of it will depend on turnout. It’s a beautiful day. We think we have the best organization on the ground, so who knows?”

“I have come to the conclusion that this race will continue until the last primary or caucus vote is cast. And that’s not far away.”

Clinton was wining among women, who were casting about 60 per cent of the votes in Pennsylvania, and captured many of the three in 10 voters aged 65 or over.

She was also dominating among blue-collar voters and white men, while Obama was favoured by blacks, the affluent and about one in 10 voters who recently switched to the Democratic party.

More than 80 per cent of voters said they thought the country is already in a recession.

From Pennsylvania, the race moves to Indiana and North Carolina in two weeks, with seven more contests ending June 3 in Montana and South Dakota.

There’s enormous pressure on Clinton to perform if she is to retain any kind of shot at the Oval Office.

After nearly four months of voting, Obama is still beating her in the number of states won, awarded delegates for the party convention in August and the popular vote.

He also raised twice as much money as Clinton in March, with $42 million in the bank. She pulled in $20 million but is still facing a $10.3-million debt.

Despite the uphill battle, Clinton has refused to give up.

After all, she has taken large states like California, New Jersy, Ohio and Texas since voting began in January.

Since neither candidate will get the required number of pledged delegates needed — 2,025 — to win the Democratic nomination during regular voting, the role of superdelegates has become paramount.

Obama was leading Clinton with 1,648.5 to 1,509.5 in overall delegates going into Pennsylvania, where there were 158 up for grabs. Some four million Democrats were registered to vote.

Both candidates have tried to appeal to anti-free trade voters in the state by promising to renegotiate the North American trade pact to include protections for workers and the environment.

Clinton was expected to benefit from the fact that Pennsylvania conducts “closed” primaries. Independents who’ve favoured Obama in the past aren’t allowed to vote.

Obama was running ahead in Philadelphia, which has a large African-American population, and surrounding suburban counties full of upscale voters.

Clinton was favoured in the more blue-collar city of Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania, as well as the area around Scranton in the northeast.

Both candidates have been pulling out all the stops but have been beset by blunders.

Obama has fought charges of elitism after suggesting that small-town Americans “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” because they’re “bitter” about the dismal economy.

He’s also faced questions about his ties to contentious former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright and 1960s radical William Ayers.

Clinton, meantime, was forced to concede that she hadn’t landed under sniper fire in Bosnia when she was first lady, even though she said several times that she had.

And she replaced her chief strategist, Mark Penn, after he met with officials of the Colombian government seeking passage of a free trade agreement that she opposes.

Clinton has been down before, only to spring back and confound the pundits.

Obama knocked her off stride with an impressive win in the first vote in Iowa in January and his message of hope and bridging the partisan divide caught fire among voters.

But she surged back in the second contest in New Hampshire, fought to a draw on Super Tuesday in February and then won Ohio on March 4 to revive her candidacy.

Democratic presidential hopeful New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton outside a polling place in Conshohocken, PA near Philadelphia on primary day April 22, 2008. Photo credit Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images.