By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were running a tight race as first results from Super Tuesday’s coast-to-coast battle for party nominations started coming in.
CNN projected Clinton, hoping to be America’s first woman president, to win nomination primaries in her home state of New York and three other states while Obama, aspiring to be the first black person to occupy the oval office, claimed four others.
The Republican race appeared to be a three way contest with Vietnam war veteran John McCain piling up early wins in important Super Tuesday states and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee also posting multiple victories just days after ignoring calls to drop out of the race.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who had been campaigning as the only viable conservative alternative to national frontrunner McCain, had posted one win-in the state where he used to govern.
Former first lady Clinton is projected to win Democratic primaries in Arkansas -where her husband Bill Clinton was governor for more than a decade before becoming the president – and neighbouring Oklahoma and Tennessee.
And she had an early lead in Massachusetts, where Obama had the support of the state’s governor and two senators.
CNN projected Obama would win primaries in Delaware and Illinois, which sent him to the US Senate in 2004. He notched up a substantial early win in heavily African-American Georgia and another in Alabama, despite extensive support for Clinton among black officials in each state.
More than four-fifths of the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination are at stake, with California – where 441 Democratic delegates will be chosen – the biggest prize of the night.
Exit polls showed Obama beating Clinton by more than 2-to-1 margin in Georgia, while New York senator Clinton held a lopsided lead over Obama in Oklahoma.
As in South Carolina, African-American voters made up just over half the turnout in Georgia’s Democratic primary – and exit polls indicated that Obama, the son of a Kenyan immigrant father and a white mother, took about 80 percent of that vote.
And his nearly 40 percent showing among white voters was an improvement over South Carolina, where native son John Edwards, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, was also in the mix. Edwards dropped out of the Democratic race last week following a string of third-place showings.
“I dare say this is not going to be over certainly tonight, and maybe not for a month from now,” Democratic Party Chairperson Howard Dean told CNN.
Obama told reporters after voting in his hometown of Chicago, Illinois, that he expected a “split decision”.
“I think everybody’s flying blind at this point,” he said. “When we were doing one state at a time, we could actually track and get a sense of how that election was going and how the turnout was going. Here you’ve got 24 states. Nobody can keep track of it.”
Among the Republicans, McCain appeared headed to the top spots in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut and Delaware, based on early returns and results from exit polls in those states.
Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor recently written off as a spoiler by other Republican front-runners, made a strong showing early winning the West Virginia party convention, according to projections, handily taking his home state.
After winning the campaign-opening Iowa caucuses, Huckabee had been badly outspent by Romney and McCain and had struggled to keep pace, failing to win another contest until Tuesday.
On the line Tuesday were more than 1,000 of the 1,191 delegates necessary for the Republican nomination. New York is the biggest prize so far and would give 101 delegates to the Republican convention. Illinois would award 57 delegates. New Jersey would award 52 delegates.
Connecticut would give 27 delegates and Romney would win 40 delegates in Massachusetts. Going into Tuesday, Romney had won primaries in Nevada and his home state of Michigan.
McCain, who won primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, was hoping for a big result Tuesday to continue his momentum and catapult himself to the nomination.
Most of the Republican state contests allocate delegates on a winner-take-all basis – either by congressional district or by statewide vote – meaning Tuesday is more likely to be decisive for Republicans than for Democrats, who commonly split delegates by a proportion of the popular vote.