Poll: Late deciders propel Clinton

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton won a hard-fought Pennsylvania primary Tuesday, beating rival Barack Obama in a scrappy victory that she hopes will keep her underdog campaign alive to fight another day.

The New York senator was carried to victory by whites, women, the working class and the elderly — the third time she’s been rescued from the brink of political death after must-win victories in New Hampshire in January and Ohio in March.

With 96 percent of the precincts reporting, Clinton led by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent. The television networks and the Associated Press declared her the winner based on exit polls and early return trends.

“Some counted me out and said to drop out,” Clinton told cheering supporters in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening. “But the American people don’t quit. And they deserve a president who doesn’t quit, either.

“You listened and today you chose. ... Because of you, the tide is turning.”

Noting that Obama outspent her 3-1 in the state, Clinton made a direct appeal for contributions to shore up her cash-starved campaign.

“We can only keep winning if we can keep competing against an opponent who outspends us,” she said.

Clinton was desperate for a win, especially a big win, to jump-start her campaign heading into the final stretch of primaries. She’s looking for a series of victories to convince pivotal superdelegates that she’s the strongest Democrat and that Obama is a flawed candidate who can’t win big states against the Republicans this fall because he couldn’t beat her in them in the spring.

“I think maybe the question ought to be: Why can’t he close the deal? With his extraordinary financial advantage, why can’t he win a state like this one, if that’s the way it turns out?” Clinton said earlier Tuesday.

Even before the polls closed, Obama appeared ready to concede the state — but not the nomination.

“Let me cut to the chase,” Obama said in Philadelphia. “A win is 50 plus one. So if Senator Clinton gets over 50 percent, she’s won the state. I don’t try to pretend I enjoy getting 45 percent and that’s a moral victory; we’ve lost the state.

“What I do believe is we’re coming to the end of this process, and if you look, we’ve won twice as many states. We’ve won the popular vote by a fairly substantial margin. We’ve got a very big lead in pledged delegates, and we’ve competed in every state, win or lose.”

Exit polls showed that Clinton won among whites, women, those with incomes below $50,000 and no college education, those older than 65, Roman Catholics and Jews, and gun owners.

Among whites 60 and older — a solid third of the vote — she won by nearly 2-1.

More than one in 10 white voters said the race of the candidate was important to their decision, and they went for Clinton by a 3-1 margin.

Obama won among blacks, men, those under the age of 44 and those with incomes above $200,000.

He won Philadelphia and its suburbs; she won everywhere else.

Turnout was heavy in a state seeing its first contested Democratic primary since 1976.

One out of 10 voters said they’d changed their party registrations so they could vote in the primary, according to exit polls. They broke for Obama by a margin of nearly 2-1.

Yet late-deciding voters — including those who’d long been registered Democrats — broke heavily for Clinton.

One possible explanation was the flood of controversial news about Obama in recent weeks, as well as his defensive performance in a debate last week.

Another possible ingredient in the mix was mischief: Popular conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for weeks urged his loyal listeners to register as Democrats to vote for Clinton and prolong an increasingly harsh battle that might benefit the Republicans.

The Pennsylvania vote could well do that, even if it remains a daunting challenge for Clinton to win the nomination.

With 158 delegates at stake — likely to be divided almost evenly — Clinton could gain only incrementally on Obama, who entered the day leading by 1,648 to 1,509, a margin of 139.

She also looked to gain on Obama in the popular vote.

But it was her last chance to score a big gain on Obama, who led in the nationwide vote count by as much as 800,000. After Tuesday, there are only seven states — and Puerto Rico — left to vote, none of them as big.

Her win came after an often bitter campaign that saw both candidates waging personal campaigns against each other, often aimed at winning over the state’s white, working-class voters.

The final votes are May 6 in Indiana and North Carolina, followed by West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana, Puerto Rico and South Dakota.