Day: February 5, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama captured the Illinois and Georgia Democratic primaries Tuesday night while Hillary Clinton appeared headed for victory in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee.

On the Republican side, John McCain won Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut but failed to beat Mitt Romney in Massachusetts after a big push there. Mike Huckabee won the West Virginia caucus and Arkansas.

In Georgia, exit polls showed black voters made up 52 percent and Obama captured 86 percent. But Obama also won 43 percent of the white vote, a sharp increase over the South Carolina results, a trend that could mean problems for Sen. Hillary Clinton in other states.

Among non African-American voters, Obama easily beat Clinton, garnering well over 50 percent.

Sen. Barack Obama captured the Illinois and Georgia Democratic primaries Tuesday night while Hillary Clinton appeared headed for victory in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee.

On the Republican side, John McCain won Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut but failed to beat Mitt Romney in Massachusetts after a big push there. Mike Huckabee won the West Virginia caucus and Arkansas.

In Georgia, exit polls showed black voters made up 52 percent and Obama captured 86 percent. But Obama also won 43 percent of the white vote, a sharp increase over the South Carolina results, a trend that could mean problems for Sen. Hillary Clinton in other states.

Among non African-American voters, Obama easily beat Clinton, garnering well over 50 percent.

John McCain hoped to seal the deal. Mitt Romney wanted to stay alive. Either outcome was possible.

Super Tuesday’s coast-to-coast voting promised either to cap a turbulent yearlong campaign for the Republican presidential nomination by giving McCain enough convention delegates to make him unstoppable or to stretch the race out for weeks by putting Romney within reach of his chief rival’s total.

Arizona Sen. John McCain challenged his remaining rivals for control of the Republican presidential race Tuesday in primaries and caucuses from Connecticut to California. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama vied for Democratic delegates in a grueling campaign with no end in sight.

After an early series of low-delegate, single-state contests, Super Tuesday was anything but — primaries and caucuses spread across nearly half the country in the most wide-open presidential campaign in memory.

Tom Effertz is 73 and a wheat farmer. Rosie Erganian is 52 and lives in a town on the Missouri River. He’s a Republican. She’s a Democrat. Both Missourians want anyone but Democrat Hillary Clinton for U.S. president.

“We’re tired of the Hillary thing,” Effertz said. “We’d had enough of Bill and Hillary.”

“I do not like the way they’ve been kind of nasty,” said Erganian, of Rocheport, Missouri. “I don’t want anybody in office like that.”