Clinton Wins New York

The delegate rich state of New York, the second biggest prize on Super Tuesday after California, was tonight called for Hillary Clinton based on exit poll projections.

Clinton was also projected to win Oklahoma, Arkansas - where she was first lady - and the neighboring state of Tennessee.

Polls suggested wins for Obama in Georgia, one of the most populous states, as well as his home state, Illinois, and Delaware.

The New England states of Connecticut and Massachusetts are still in the balance between the Democratic contenders, as is New Jersey.

The Democrats and Republicans are contesting one of the biggest and most competitive elections in US history to choose their party's nominees for the November White House race. The Democrats split delegates proportionally from the primaries, meaning the share of the vote in both congressional districts and statewide is crucial.

In the Republican race, John McCain, the frontrunner, was projected to win New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut while Mitt Romney is set to take Massachusetts, the state where he was governor.

Obama began last week 10 to 20 points adrift of Hillary Clinton in almost all of the 22 states that voted. But over the last week he has cut into that lead.

The exit polls suggested Obama was winning over young, educated and black voters while Clinton had greater appeal among women, the working class and Hispanics. But her share of women was not as strong as she had banked on.

In Georgia, Clinton had hoped her share of the white female vote would mirror Obama's support among African-Americans but she won 62%-36% of the white female vote compared to Obama's 88% of African-Americans.

The exit polls in Georgia suggested the result in the Republican race was too close to call with a three-way battle between McCain, Romney and Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee, a Baptist pastor with a strong appeal among Christian evangelicals, was always expected to do well in the south.

The first of the results to come through was West Virginia, where Huckabee, the Baptist pastor and surprise winner in Iowa, took the Republican convention. That gave him 18 delegates. He was also projected to win his home state of Arkansas.

But he is secondary to the main battle being fought between McCain and Romney in the north-East, mid-west and California.
While the proportional system used by the Democrats made it likely the Democratic race would be inconclusive, the Republican winner-takes-all system meant that McCain stood a chance of knocking out Romney.

Super Tuesday comes after thousands of hours of campaigning, more than a score of debates and millions of dollars spent on advertising. At stake in the Democratic race are 1,688 out of the 4,049 who will decide the nomination at the Democratic convention in August.

Clinton is seeking to regain the Democratic front-runner status that she enjoyed almost all of last year but lost after being defeated in Iowa and South Carolina last month. Obama is hoping to take the front-runner mantle for the first time to carry him into the next round of elections.

Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns predicted they would both emerge with substantial numbers of delegates and that the battle would continue for months yet.

Super Tuesday has proved to be more competitive than most US general elections. The parties in general elections normally only concentrate resources in about a dozen or less swing states but the candidates over the last week have had to do battle in almost all 22 states.