Once again, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded wins last night:
Kentucky’s Democratic electorate proved tailor-made for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as her most reliable voters turned out in large numbers, giving her a win of better than 2 to 1 over Sen. Barack Obama. But Obama scored a rare double-digit win among white voters in Oregon, capitalizing on that state’s more liberal electorate.
In Kentucky, white women — core Clinton supporters — made up half of all Democratic primary voters, and whites without college degrees made up 59 percent. According to the network exit poll, Clinton beat Obama by overwhelming margins among both groups, and she carried those age 65 and older by 60 percentage points, her second-best showing among older voters in any of the primaries or caucuses so far.
Obama scored sporadic wins among these voters in previous contests, but in Oregon, a swing state in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, a telephone survey of voters in the mail-only Democratic primary showed him doing well among Clinton’s base.
In Oregon, Obama scored his first victory among white voters since March 4, in Vermont. In both Oregon and Vermont, about six in 10 Democratic voters described themselves as liberal. By contrast, liberals made up fewer than four in 10 election-day voters in Kentucky. Clinton won white voters in Kentucky by 49 percentage points.
Here are the numbers from Kentucky, where Clinton scored a West Virginia-style win:
So Clinton netted 23 delegates and 249,374 popular votes from Kentucky.
In Oregon, however, preliminary results show Obama with a similarly big win:
At the moment, Obama looks to net at least 9-10 pledged delegates and about 90,000 popular votes.
But these results don’t matter as much as the fact that, last night, Obama reached a significant benchmark on the way to victory:
Senator Barack Obama took a big step toward becoming the Democratic presidential nominee on Tuesday, amassing enough additional delegates to claim an all but insurmountable advantage in his race against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
While Mrs. Clinton’s campaign continued to make a case that she could prevail, Mr. Obama seized on the results from Democratic contests in Kentucky and Oregon to move into a new phase of the campaign in which he will face different challenges. Those include bringing disaffected Clinton supporters into his camp; winning over elements of the Democratic coalition like working-class whites, Hispanics and Jews; and fending off attacks from Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, especially on national security.
Mr. Obama won easily in Oregon. But his obstacles were underlined by a lopsided defeat in Kentucky, where just half of the Democratic voters said in exit polls that they would back him in the general election this fall.
Under the rules used by Democrats, the split decision was enough for Mr. Obama to secure a majority of the delegates up for grabs in primaries and caucuses. His campaign has portrayed success in winning those pledged delegates as the most important yardstick for judging the will of Democratic voters, and has encouraged superdelegates — elected officials and party leaders who have an automatic vote at the convention — to fall in line accordingly.
“We have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people, and you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States of America,” Mr. Obama said in an address on Tuesday night, standing in front of a moonlit Capitol in Des Moines.
More importantly, Obama is now less than 100 delegates shy of achieving the majority he needs to actually get the nomination.
This nomination is over, folks.
