Clinton and Obama Fiercely Battle for Ohio

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were locked in a tight contest for the Ohio mega-state Tuesday that could dictate whether she presses ahead with her bid for the White House or abandons the race.

Clinton was looking for a decisive victory but exit polls after the ballot closed showed the contest too close to call.

Voting was continuing in the other key contest, Texas, the other mega-state. Polls of voters in Texas throughout the day indicated a large turn-out by Latinos, who made up a third of the Democratic electorate.

The high turn-out of Latinos is potentially good news for Clinton, who has enjoyed overwhelming support among this group in earlier primaries.

Clinton had cast Ohio as a do-or-die contest in her campaign for the Democratic nomination, but if she was to win either Ohio or Texas, she is likely to continue in the race.

Her campaign manager, Terry McAuliffe, argued the closeness of the contest meant that race had to go on. "Let me be crystal clear - Hillary Clinton is not going anywhere," he said.

In another of the contests tonight, Vermont, the small New England state, the exit polls suggested an overwhelming victory for Obama. With only 5%of the votes counted, Obama was beating Clinton by a margin of 58% to 40%.

A win in Vermont would stretch his winning streak over Clinton to 12 contests.

In the Republican race, exit polls projected decisive wins for John McCain over Mike Huckabee in Ohio and Vermont.

McCain established himself last month as the presumptive Republican nominee but needs an arithmetical majority to formalise that: he could reach that target tonight.

Although there had been no realistic chance of his rivals, catching him before last night's results, neither had been prepared to quit the race.

With 5% of the vote counted, McCain had 72%, Huckabee 15% and Ron Paul 5%.

Clinton's campaign team indicated she intended to continue with the race.

The next contest is Wyoming, which holds its caucuses on Saturday, followed by Mississippi, which has its primary on Tuesday. The next big prize is Pennsylvania on April 22, the last of the mega-states in the race.

Ohio's governor, Ted Strickland, who has supported Clinton, also suggested she will remain in the race. He downplayed the argument of the Obama camp that it remained impossible for Clinton to catch up to his lead in delegates.

Strickland suggested that super-delegates - the members of Congress and other senior Democrats who may be called on to cast the decisive ballots in a close race - should keep in mind Clinton's performance in large states such as New York, New Jersey and California as well as the delegate count.

Exit polls in Ohio showed Clinton holding on to her core support: women, low income voters and union households. However, Obama carried more than 90% of the African-American vote which made up 20% of the electorate.

Exit polls suggested a good night for Clinton in Texas as well where she dominated among Latino voters, with 64% support. That looked set to eclipse Obama's strength among African American voters, where there was a slightly lower turnout than in the 2004 primary.

Two senior members of her team, Howard Wolfson and Phil Singer, speaking in a conference call with reporters before the results came through, said they expected Obama to win Wyoming and Mississippi but expressed confidence about Pennsylvania.

The magic number for securing the Democratic nomination is 2,025 delegates at the party conference in Denver in August.

Before last night's primaries, Obama had 1,386 delegates (including the 'super-delegates', senior Democrats such as members of Congress who automatically have a vote) and Clinton 1,276.

There are ten contests remaining, with more than 600 at stake. Exit polls in yesterday's primaries showed that concern about the economy was the biggest issue for most voters, 61% in recession-hit Ohio and 48% in Texas.

The Iraq war, the biggest issue throughout most of last year, was named as the main issue by only 17% of those leaving the polls yesterday in Ohio and 26% in Texas.

In Vermont, a liberal state, which is strongly anti-war, voters named the Iraq war as one of the main issues, second only to the economy. Thirty-six per cent said opposition to the Iraq war was the main issue while 40% said it was the impending recession.

Clinton since the middle of last week has thrown almost everything at Obama, from his links with Antoin 'Tony' Rezko, who went on trial for alleged corruption on Monday, through to a controversial ad questioning whether the country would be safe in his hands.

One of the biggest issues in Ohio has been the North American Free Trade Agreement, which opened up markets with Mexico and Canada and which many in the state blame for job losses.

The exit polls showed that 80% of voters in Ohio said the agreement had cost the state jobs.

Although Bill Clinton as president signed the Nafta deal, Hillary Clinton managed to turn the issue into a negative for Obama, in part because of a leaked memo suggesting he would not, as promised, renegotiate it.