Obama wins convincingly in 3 states

WASHINGTON – Sen. Barack Obama swept the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington state Saturday night, slicing into Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s slender delegate lead in their historic race for the Democratic presidential nomination.\nThe Illinois senator also won caucuses in the Virgin Islands, completing his best night of the campaign.\n“Today, voters from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast to the heart of America stood up to say ‘yes we can,’” Obama told a cheering audience of Democrats at a party dinner in Richmond, Va.\nHe jabbed simultaneously at Clinton and Arizona Sen. John McCain, saying the election was a choice between debating the Republican nominee-in-waiting “about who has the most experience in Washington, or debating him about who’s most likely to change Washington. Because that’s a debate we can win.”\nClinton preceded Obama to the podium. She did not refer to the night’s voting, instead turning against McCain. “We have tried it President Bush’s way,” she said, “and now the Republicans have chosen more of the same.”\nShe left quickly after her speech, departing before Obama’s arrival. But his supporters made their presence known, sending up chants of “Obama” from the audience as she made her way offstage.\nObama’s winning margins ranged from substantial to crushing.\nHe won roughly two-thirds of the vote in Washington state and Nebraska, and almost 90 percent in the Virgin Islands.\nNearly complete Louisiana returns showed Obama with 57 percent of the vote, to 36 percent for the former first lady. As in his earlier Southern triumphs in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, Obama, a black man, rode a wave of African-American support to victory in Louisiana. Clinton won the white vote overwhelmingly.\nIn all, the Democrats scrapped for 161 delegates in the night’s contests.\nIn incomplete allocations, Obama won 72, Clinton 40.\nIn overall totals in The Associated Press count, Clinton had 1,095 delegates to 1,070 for Obama, counting so-called superdelegates. They are party leaders not chosen at primaries or caucuses, free to change their minds. A total of 2,025 delegates is required to win the nomination at the national convention in Denver.\nMcCain flunked his first ballot tests since becoming the Republican nominee-in-waiting. He lost Kansas caucuses to Mike Huckabee, gaining less than 24 percent of the vote. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, got nearly 60 percent of the vote a few hours after saying, “I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them.” He won all 36 delegates at stake.\nHuckabee also won the Louisiana primary, but fell short of 50 percent, the threshold necessary to pocket the 20 delegates that were available. Instead, they will be awarded at a state convention next weekend.\nMcCain won the third Republican race of the night, Washington’s caucuses. None of the state’s delegates will be awarded until next week.\nFor all his brave talk, Huckabee was hopelessly behind in the delegate race. McCain had 719, compared with 234 for Huckabee and 14 for Paul. It takes 1,191 to win the nomination at the national convention.\nThe Democrats’ race was as close as the Republicans’ was not, a contest between Obama, hoping to become the first black president, and Clinton, campaigning to become the first female commander in chief.\nThe two rivals contest primaries on Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, all states where Obama and his campaign are hopeful of winning.\nPreliminary results of a survey of voters leaving their polling places in Louisiana showed that nearly half of those casting ballots were black. As a group, African-Americans have overwhelmingly favored Obama in earlier primaries, helping him to wins in several Southern states.\nObama was gaining about 80 percent of the black votes statewide, while Clinton was winning 70 percent support among whites, the exit poll showed.\nOne in seven Democratic voters and about one in 10 Republicans said Hurricane Katrina had caused their families severe hardship from which they have not recovered. There was another indication of the impact the storm had on the state. Early results suggested that northern Louisiana accounted for a larger share of the electorate than in the past, presumably the result of the decline in population in the hurricane-battered New Orleans area.\nMcCain cleared his path to the party nomination earlier in the week with a string of Super Tuesday victories that drove Romney from the race. He spent the rest of the week trying to reassure skeptical conservatives, at the same time party leaders quickly closed ranks behind him