Tuesday, April 22, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton survived yet another day.
There will be little time for celebration, though. Time and money are running out.
Her win Tuesday in the large and important swing state of Pennsylvania was hard-fought. Barack Obama’s well-funded effort to shut her down did not reach its ultimate goal of a surprise upset.
But Clinton now faces a dwindling number of contests, and she’s at a steep financial disadvantage.
Obama already is spending twice as much on ads airing in North Carolina and Indiana, the two states that come up next with primaries on May 6. He’s even advertising in Oregon, a state that he should win, where voting by mail begins in the first week of May.
He can afford to shower every contest with campaign dollars from the $42 million he had at the beginning of April, while Clinton is in debt. She’ll have to either persuade donors to give her more money to sustain her long-shot bid or float herself another multimillion- dollar loan.
In Pennsylvania, Clinton won with the support of whites, women and older voters, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks.
Underscoring the race’s excitement, more than one in 10 voters Tuesday had registered with the state’s Democratic party since the beginning of the year. And about six in 10 of them were voting for Obama.
Some voters had a hard time making up their minds. About a quarter of the day’s voters reported having made their minds up within the past week, and about six in 10 of them backed Clinton.
Of the states left, the biggest prize is North Carolina, a state that both sides are predicting Obama will win.