Hillary Clinton cruised to a comfortable victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary Tuesday, although she seemed unlikely to significantly erode his national lead in delegates and the popular vote.
Even so, Clinton planned to press on to the next batch of primaries, which will be held May 6 in Indiana and North Carolina. That buys her two more weeks to continue sowing doubts about Obama’s electability.
“Some people wanted me out and said to drop out,” said Clinton, flanked by her husband at an exuberant victory rally in Philadelphia. “But the American people don’t quit and they deserve a president a president who doesn’t quit either.”
With 68 percent of the vote in, Clinton was leading Obama by a margin of 54 to 46 percent.
Exit polls showed Clinton beating Obama by 60 to 40 among whites, 56 to 44 among women, 57 to 42 percent among union households, 60 to 39 percent among voters age 65 and older, and 57 to 43 percent among voters without college degrees. Obama beat Clinton among blacks (92-8), urban voters (69-31) and those with college degrees (58-42).
Obama argued that he was always the underdog in Pennsylvania, a state that favored Clinton because of its abundance of white, blue-collar moderates once known as Reagan Democrats.
“It is an uphill battle,” Obama said before the polls closed. “Senator Clinton had a 20-point lead to start with and we think we have closed it but we still I think have to consider ourselves the underdog.”
There was evidence that Obama hurt himself by telling a group of wealthy donors in San Francisco that small town Pennsylvanians were “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion.” He lost to Clinton among gun owners (58 to 42) and voters who attend religious services weekly (59 to 41), according to the exit polls.
There was also evidence of lingering fallout from the controversy over Obama’s ex-pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who accused the U.S. government of creating the AIDS virus to destroy blacks. Among white men in Pennsylvania, Clinton beat Obama by 53 percent to 46 percent.
This fresh evidence of a racial divide among Democrats came the day after former President Bill Clinton accused Obama of “playing the race card” against him. Clinton was referring to heavy criticism he received after seemingly diminishing Obama’s win in South Carolina as merely the result of the black vote.
Although Pennsylvania election officials reported heavy turnout, there were not enough voters for Clinton to cut deeply into Obama’s lead in the popular vote, which was between 700,000 and 800,000 before Tuesday’s contest. Nor was Clinton expected to post more than a net gain of about a dozen delegates, barely denting Obama’s 139-delegate lead heading into Pennsylvania.
