Obama Steals Virginia from Hillary!

By Pamela Mortimer

FOX News projected that Barack Obama has managed to steal the majority of Virginia delegates away from Hillary Clinton, the Illinois senator’s main Democratic opponent.

Polls closed at 8 PM in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., effectively ending the "Potomac Primaries". While the Democratic race seemed fairly easy to call, the Republican race was still anybody’s game.

The race between Republican candidates is too close to call. Exit polls show John McCain and Mike Huckabee running neck and neck toward a possible photo finish. Huckabee fared well among the staunch conservatives in the western part of the state.

Going into the Potomac Primaries, Obama and McCain were the favorites with both camps expecting to grab a large portion of the 168 Democratic delegates and the 113 Republican delegates. McCain was particularly anxious to claim victory after the GOP leader suffered embarrassing defeats to Huckabee in Kansas and Louisiana.

The Democratic voters were broken down in this fashion: 58 percent of women favored Senator Obama, while 42 percent favored Senator Clinton. 53 percent of seniors chose Obama, while 47 percent picked Clinton.

Regardless of all predictions before the primary, Obama wasn’t counting his chickens before they hatched. After all, the January 8th primary in New Hampshire showed him as a favorite. The predictions proved to be faulty when he lost to Clinton.

"I don’t win until I win … we’re never expected to win," he said.

McCain was expected to pull out in front since Mitt Romney dropped out of the race last week. Huckabee plans to hang in, saying he’s more into "miracles than mathematical odds".

"The path to victory is very complicated and frankly it is pretty daunting," Huckabee told FOX News Tuesday. "The path to defeat is real easy — all I have to do is walk off the field. I’ve never taken the easy way out in my life."

Many have noted the increase in voter turn out, particularly in Virginia and D.C. There have been notable spikes in both new voter registrations and absentee ballots.

A total of 32,166 people had applied for absentee ballots in Virginia. 61 percent of the 37,025 people who met the January 14 deadline for registering to vote were age 24 or younger.

In the D.C., voter registration has increased by 34,916 to 377,007 since the 2004 presidential primary.