Local vote reflects wider results
in both parties' primaries
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois swept the Democratic Party’s Potomac primaries Tuesday, rolling to big wins over New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
In Virginia, Obama captured 64 percent of the popular vote and 50 delegates, while Clinton won 26 delegates.
In the Republican primaries, Arizona Sen. John McCain survived a strong challenge by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to claim victory in Virginia, grabbing all 60 of the delegates at stake. McCain also won the Maryland and Washington, D.C. primaries. He holds a commanding lead in delegates and is close to clinching the Republican nomination.
In Rockbridge County, Obama beat Clinton by about 1,550 votes. McCain barely beat Huckabee, 795-782, with Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney each receiving about 70 votes. Countywide, 4,034 voters went to the polls. About 57 percent of those voted in the Democratic primary.
Obama defeated Clinton handily in Lexington as well, 597-271, and McCain beat Huckabee 240-82. Citywide, 1,214 voters cast ballots, with 71 percent voting in the Democratic primary. Lexington has about 3,200 registered voters.
Obama won three times as many votes as Clinton in Washington, D.C. and won about 60 percent of the vote in Maryland.
In the Republican contest, polls released earlier this week had shown McCain with a substantial lead in Virginia. But Huckabee campaigned hard in the commonwealth’s rural counties and led vote counts early in the evening. McCain won 50 percent of the final vote while Huckabee took 41 percent statewide. Paul and Romney, who suspended his national campaign last week, won most of the remaining votes.
Huckabee did well in the Shenandoah Valley and southwest Virginia, but McCain's strong showing in the more populous areas of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads carried him to victory.
Turnout was much higher statewide in the Democratic race, with more than 960,000 votes cast. On the Republican side, only half as many voters -- about 480,000 -- cast ballots.
Bad weather plagued parts of the region throughout the day, and a Maryland judge extend voting by 90 minutes to let voters stuck in traffic reach the polls before they closed.
The Democratic Party’s system for allocating delegates to the Democratic convention has kept both candidates from taking a commanding lead. The party awards delegates on a proportional basis, meaning a candidate who wins 60 percent of the vote will earn roughly 60 percent of the delegates. According to CNN, Obama has won 1,052 pledged delegates while Clinton has won 951.
But nearly 800 super delegates are not selected by the primary system and can choose to support either candidate. CNN estimates that Clinton currently holds a 234-156 lead over Obama among those delegates, leaving the Illinois senator with a slim 20-delegate lead over his rival. A candidate needs 2,025 delegates to clinch the nomination.
Super delegates are Democrats who are elected officials, party leaders and members of the party’s national committee. Some have already declared their support for one of the candidates, but most are waiting to see if Obama or Clinton can build a decisive lead in delegates from the primaries and caucuses.
In Lexington, precinct chief Fred Vaughan said at 2 p.m. Tuesday that turnout had been strong.
“We expect to have about 1,200 [voters], and I think we’ve had about 700 so far,” Vaughn said.
Lexington Democrats said the economy and Iraq war were their top concerns. Tom Oxendine said he thinks voters are more engaged this year.
“They are paying more attention because the stakes are so high,” Oxendine said.
Clinton essentially conceded the Maryland and Washington, D.C. races to Obama and focused her efforts on Virginia. She was scheduled to appear at a Sunday rally in Roanoke, but high winds in Washington, D.C. kept her plane from taking off.
Her spouse, former President Bill Clinton, did make two appearances in southwestern Virginia over the weekend.
Clinton and Obama were scheduled to campaign in the Shenandoah Valley on Monday, but both canceled because of wildfires in the area.
Gov. Tim Kaine and U.S. Reps. James Moran, Rick Boucher and Bobby Scott have endorsed Obama. Boucher represents southwestern Virginia, where Clinton was expected to do well among poorer, rural white voters, a group she has won in earlier primaries. Virginia also has large populations of African-American and affluent white voters, two groups that have been Obama’s strongest supporters.
“I think at this point Sen. Obama has proven he is someone who is going to attract Americans from all walks of life,” Kevin Griffis, Obama’s Virginia spokesman, said before the primary.
Griffis predicted that Obama would do better than expected in the Shenandoah Valley and southwestern Virginia.
Clinton’s press office did not return calls and an e-mail seeking comment.
In Lexington, Democrat David Cox, who waged an unsuccessful campaign for state Senate last year, said almost all of the Democrats he talked to were supporting Obama.
Cox said he thinks Obama will have a better chance than Clinton to capture Virginia in November’s election. A Democrat has not won Virginia since Lyndon Johnson, the incumbent, beat Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election.
“It’s hard to explain because he’s probably considered more ‘liberal’ than Clinton,” Cox said of Obama, “but he’s appealing to people in more conservative states.”
The Illinois senator raised $32 million nationwide in January while Clinton raised $13 million. Last week Clinton confirmed that she had lent her campaign $5 million of her own money.
Clinton’s campaign has raised $10 million since Super Tuesday. She began running ads on Virginia TV stations on Feb. 8. Obama began running ads Feb. 6.
Tuesday’s primaries came after Obama swept four states and the Virgin Islands last weekend. He won two-thirds of the vote in Saturday’s Nebraska and Washington state caucuses and defeated Clinton 57-36 percent in the Louisiana primary, with the remaining 7 percent of the vote going to other candidates. Obama won Sunday’s Maine caucuses with 59 percent of the vote.
After Saturday’s losses, Clinton replaced her campaign manager, Patty Solis Doyle, with Maggie Williams, who served as her chief of staff when she was First Lady.
The Democratic Party’s complicated allocation system makes it difficult to determine which candidate actually has more delegates. But regardless of the actual count, neither candidate has a clear advantage.
If neither candidate wins the required number of delegates, the nominee could be decided during the Democratic National Convention next summer. The last convention that took more than one ballot to decide a nominee was in 1952.
But in 1960 and 1968 the Democratic conventions featured political deal-making that led to calls for a nominating system that placed more weight on primary and caucus results and less on the decisions of party operatives.
Produced by
Washington and Lee
journalism students.
Lead Supervisors:
Prof. Brian
Richardson
Prof. Phylissa
Mitchell
Editing supervisor:
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Cumming
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd