By IRNA
New York : Senator Barack Obama won powerful victories over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska, giving him a Saturday sweep going into a month when the Democratic nominating contests were expected to favor him.
Still, the results were expected to do little to settle the muddle in the delegate race that resulted after the wave of contests last Tuesday in which the two candidates split up states from coast to coast.
In Republican contests on Saturday, Mike Huckabee won in Kansas an embarrassing setback for Senator John McCain as he tries to rally the party around him as the nominee.
The two were locked in races in Louisiana and Washington that were too close to call. While Obama had been expected to win the contests on Saturday, the margin of victories were surprising, particularly in Washington, a predominately white state where he captured 57 percent of the vote in caucus voting compared to Mrs. Clinton’s 31 percent.
And in Nebraska, which also held caucuses, he received an impressive 68 percent of the vote to Mrs Clinton’s 32 percent.
“Today, voters from the West Coast, the Gulf Coast and the heart of America are joining the chorus of Americans who are choosing change over more of the same failed politics in Washington. They see in Barack Obama the best chance to beat John McCain in the fall, unite our country, take on the special interests, and confront the challenges facing working families,” said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
In the Lousiana primary, Obama received 56 percent of the vote to Mrs Clinton’s 37 percent. The results on the Republican side provided their own surprise, particularly since Huckabee’s victories came as McCain seemed headed to the nomination.
Huckabee declared that the voters had spoken: “They spoke with one voice: they said I am the authentic conservative in this race.” The McCain campaign played down Huckabee’s victories, saying they were expected.
“John McCain is the presumptive nominee in this race and our path forward is unchanged by today’s results,” a spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, said.
“Our focus remains the same: uniting the Republican Party to defeat Democrats in 2008.
Even before any results were in, Huckabee told reporters Saturday that despite the daunting number of delegates McCain has amassed, he was not pulling out of the race.
Huckabee, a pastor before he became governor of Arkansas, said: “I didn’t major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them, too.”
In Washington, the Democratic Party reported record-breaking numbers of people attending caucuses, with early totals suggesting turnout would be nearly be nearly double what it was in 2004 – itself a record year – when 100,000 Democrats caucused.
While Obama’s victories were impressive, the Democratic Party awards delegates proportionally, so Mrs Clinton stands to walk away from the contests with a sizable number, and both campaigns have dug in for a long and fierce delegate fight, The New York Times said.
With the fight for the nomination extending beyond the 22 contests on February 5, voters in a fresh batch of states have suddenly found themselves in the thick of the most competitive primary in a generation, after years of casting votes well after the nominee was effectively chosen.
The nominating fight now turns to Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, which hold their primaries on Tuesday. Obama is considered well-positioned in those states.
The Republican contest seems more settled, with McCain holding a nearly insurmountable lead in delegates over Huckabee. Still, before the Kansas results came in Saturday, Huckabee addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington and then told reporters he had no intention of dropping out until one of the Republican candidates amassed the 1,191 delegates needed to be the nominee.
McCain has 695 delegates so far, Huckabee, 159, and former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, 5.
McCain is far enough ahead in the delegate race that his advisers have said it would be all but impossible for anyone else to win the nomination. His other chief contender, Mitt Romney, bowed to those odds when he suspended his campaign on Thursday.