The huge gap between Democratic and Republican primary turnout in Wisconsin became fully defined as the mass of votes poured in late Tuesday night.

With 97 percent of precincts reported according to the Associated Press, the votes counted in the Democratic primary totaled just about 1.1 million. The Republican primary turnout was just more than 400,000.

This occurred in a battleground state -- Democrat John Kerry beat President George W. Bush there by just 1 point -- which also conducted an "open" primary Tuesday. Wisconsin doesn't register voters by party, so any voter, regardless of personal partisan affiliation, could vote in either party's primary.

The fact that the race for the Democratic nomination between Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York remains much more competitive than the Republican contest that has been virtually locked up by Arizona Sen. John McCain may be something of a factor, but this kind of proportional imbalance was seen in many states even when there was more of a Republican race.

It's not just that Obama received nearly three times more votes in easily winning the Wisconsin Democratic primary than McCain did in easily winning the state's GOP contest. McCain also received fewer than half the votes taken by Clinton as she finished a distant second in the Democratic race.

The turnout for Tuesday's primary also was considerably higher than for the heated Democratic primary held in Wisconsin on Feb. 17, 2004, in which Kerry out-competed then-North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. That contest drew a total of roughly 826,000 voters.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama proved Tuesday night, in the wake of his primary win in Wisconsin, that he knows one basic fact about national campaigning: If the TV networks are going to give you lots of free air time, take it.

Speaking at a packed rally at a sports arena in Houston -- where he shifted his campaign in advance of the key Texas primary scheduled for March 4 -- Obama acknowledged the win in Wisconsin (which gave him a nine-event winning streak in primaries and caucuses held after the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests). But he mostly gave his stump speech, in typically dynamic style, that ran to about 45 minutes ... and which some networks carried at length.

While Obama's comments about Arizona Sen. John McCain -- the virtually certain Republican nominee -- were not new to him, they did create a bit of a sense of a long-distance debate. McCain earlier in the evening, in remarks to supporters in Columbus, Ohio, following his own Tuesday win in Wisconsin, had leveled barely veiled criticisms at Obama as too inexperienced -- especially on defense and foreign policy matters -- to be president.

"I revere and honor his service to this country, he is a genuine American hero," Obama said of McCain, who was a Vietnam War POW. "But when he embraces George Bush's failed economic policies, when he says he's willing to send our troops into another 100 years in Iraq, then he represents the policies of yesterday and I want to be the candidate of tomorrow. And I'm looking forward to having that debate with John McCain."

While Arizona Sen. John McCain won an easy win over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Wisconsin Tuesday, he was unable to stem one of the most persistent trends of the presidential nominating season: the huge advantage that Democratic candidates have had at turning out voters in all but a very small number of states.

With just more than half of precincts reporting, roughly 520,000 votes had been counted in the Democratic primary -- to just a bit more than 207,000 on the Republican side. This occurred in an "open primary" state, meaning that voters, regardless of partisan identification, could vote in either party's primary.

CQ Politics' Jonathan Allen contributed the following:

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama continued to show strong appeal to non-traditional Democratic primary voters in today's Wisconsin primary, which does not register voters by party and therefore held an "open" primary.

Exit polling showed that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton actually edged Obama, 52% to 47%, among white Democratic voters who made up just more than half of the Democratic primary electorate. But among independent voters, who were about a quarter of the Democratic primary electorate, Obama held a dominant 60-30 lead over Clinton. The crossover Republicans who participated in the Democratic primary -- about a tenth of the exit poll respondents -- favored Obama with 70 percent of their votes.

Clinton held a narrow edge among women voters, but Obama dominated among men voters by more than a 2-1 margin.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton brushed past her defeat by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in today's Wisconsin primary, addressing an enthusiastic audience in Youngstown, Ohio -- in a state holding a key March 4 primary -- with a speech that made her familiar claims of being more experienced and better suited to be president than Obama.

"I want to talk to you about the choice you have in this election and why that choice matters," Clinton said. "It is about picking a president that relies not just on words but on work and hard work to get America back."

"We can't just have speeches. We've got to have solutions. And we need those solutions for America," she added.

"They need a president ready on day one to be commander-in-chief, ready to manage the economy and ready to beat the Republicans in November. With your help I will be that president," Clinton stated later in her speech. "One of us is ready to commander-in-chief in dangerous world."

CQ Politics' Grigs Crawford contributed on this article.

Barack Obama will be the winner of Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary when all the votes are counted tonight, according to networks CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. This result would run Obama's winning streak over Hillary Rodham Clinton to nine Democratic contests since the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday voting spree, raising the stakes even higher for the next round of primaries March 4 in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Arizona Sen. John McCain celebrated his victory in Tuesday's Wisconsin primary by stating that he will be the Republican nominee. McCain also made a clear effort to juxtapose himself against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as the possible Democratic Party nominee, ignoring New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and taking shots at Obama's theme of change and level of foreign policy experience.

"I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history," McCain said in a barely veiled criticism of Obama, whom he did not mention by name. He also clearly alluded to Obama in describing an opponent who said he might bomb Pakistan, a U.S. ally -- a reference to Obama's comment last year that he would pursue al Quida leaders in Pakistan if they were located there -- but said he would negotiate with the hostile regime in Iran.

"I promise you I will wage a campaign with determination with passion and with the right ideas," McCain told supporters Tuesday night in Columbus, Ohio, where he was campaigning in advance of the March 4 primary in that state.

McCain did not ignore economic issues, which exit poll respondents in both parties' Wisconsin primaries said was their top concern. He said he would work to balance the federal budget, "not with smoke and mirrors, but with economic growth," and renewed his oft-stated pledge to cut wasteful spending.

But McCain, a former Vietnan War POW and a strong supporter of President Bush's "surge" strategy in Iraq, returned to his experience on military affairs. "I know what our military can do, what it can do better, and what it should not do.... I know how this world works, I know the good and evil in it."

CQ Politics' Grigs Crawford contributed to this article.

Arizona Sen. John McCain is the winner of the Wisconsin Republican primary, an outcome strongly suggested by early exit poll reports that showed him breaking even with challenger Mike Huckabee among the conservative segment of the state's Republican electorate -- the portion of the GOP base that has been most skeptical of McCain as the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Networks say Barack Obama held a lead over Hillary Clinton in exit polls, but not by enough to call the Democratic primary in his primary at this point.

CNN's early reports on exit poll results from today's Wisconsin primary indicate that some patterns that develop early on are holding steady.

* Barack Obama is dominating Hillary Clinton among the youngest Democratic voters, with exit polling showing nearly three-quarters of those 30 or under backing Obama.

* Clinton is the favorite of older Democratic voters, with 60 percent support among poll respondents over 60.

* Voters who say "experience" is the most important characteristic to them favored Clinton with a whopping 95 percent.

* Voters who say bringing about change is most important favored Obama by 77-20 percent.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that the economy was the top issue for voters in both parties in the upper Midwestern state, with 90 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of Republicans viewing the economy in negative terms.

CNN, reporting on exit poll data prior to the close of polls in Wisconsin, said conservative voters in the state split evenly between front-running Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. While this suggest McCain is still having some trouble closing the deal with conservatives who object to some of his issue stands and past efforts to distance himself from his party's establishment, it also suggests that Huckabee didn't get the overwhelming conservative support he likely needed to win today's primary in the state.

The likelihood of a McCain win appears reinforced by the numbers reported earlier by ABC News on Republican voters' ideological identification. Six in 10 GOP exit poll respondents called themselves conservatives, meaning of course that four in 10 didn't. And the less self-identified conservative the voters, the stronger McCain has done in early contests this year.

The Associated Press and the news networks have released some information from the early runs of exit poll tallies in the Wisconsin primary, and they appear to lend some mystery to who is going to come out on top in the Democratic contest.

According to an analysis by ABC News' Gary Langer, a sizable majority of Wisconsin Democratic primary voters are women -- and Hillary Clinton has been running stronger among women than men. The number of older voters is up, according to this analysis, and this is another group with which Clinton has done well. Almost half the Democratic voters said they made their candidate choice more than a month ago, and Clinton was still widely viewed as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination at that time.

As one would expect in a state where blacks are 6 percent of the total population -- and very sparse outside Milwaukee -- about 90 percent of Democratic exit poll respondents in Wisconsin are white. While Obama has done well in overwhelming white states that held Democratic caucuses, most of his strong showings in higher-turnout primaries have been in places with much larger African-American populations.

Sounds like advantage Clinton? But wait...

The ABC analysis also shows that candidate attribute most important to the most Democratic voters was "can bring about needed change" -- which happens to be the central theme of Obama's campaign.

And, according to the Associated Press, exit polling shows that there was an influx of independent and first-time voters -- both typically strong constituencies for Obama -- into the Democratic primary. "Independents cast about one-quarter of the ballots in the Wisconsin race between Obama and Clinton, and roughly 15 percent of the electorate were first-time voters, according to preliminary results from interviews at polling places," AP reported.

Guess we're going to have to wait for the real votes to come in. Polls close at 8 p.m. local time, 9 p.m. eastern.

 

But the idea of voting in today's primary appears delightful to plenty of Wisconsites, who according to anecdotal reports are braving bitter cold -- and snow that has piled up during the state's particularly brutal winter -- to crowd the polls.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported this afternoon that the election commission in Wisconsin's biggest city  had to respond to requests from some precinct officials for additional ballots because of unexpectedly high turnout.

A political blog on the Web site of the State Journal newspaper in the capital of Madison reported, though, that icy conditions were creating problems for some voters with disabilities. Madison was hit by a major snowstorm this weekend and, with a month of winter to go, has already set a new record for total snowfall in a winter season.

Recent temperature readings, according to Weatherunderground.com:

Milwaukee: 11 degrees (-3 wind chill)

Madison: 8 degrees

Eau Claire: 3 degrees (-6 wind chill)

Green Bay: 4 degrees (perfect football weather!)

Oh, by the way, the Democrats are also holding presidential caucuses in Hawaii. Latest temperature reading in Honolulu was 79 degrees.

No wind chill.

The places to which the Democratic presidential contenders quickly relocated after today's "Chesapeake Primary" said much about their campaign strategies going forward.

Barack Obama, whose victories today in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia ran his winning streak to seven contests in the seven days since Super Tuesday, went straight for Wisconsin -- site of a primary next Tuesday in which the Illinois senator will be strongly favored to win.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, by contrast, went to Texas, which has its primary March 4, and spoke to a rally in El Paso. Texas is the biggest state that has not yet participating in the nominating campaign, and now looms as a must-win for Clinton and her suddenly flagging campaign.

In the most expected results tonight, it looks like Barack Obama and John McCain are cruising to easy wins in the District of Columbia's primary.

With nearly half of precincts reporting, Obama had 76 percent of the D.C. vote to 23 percent for Hillary Rodham Clinton. McCain had 67 percent to 17 percent for Mike Huckabee.

Republicans make up just a tiny portion of the electorate in the black-majority, Democratic-dominated federal city, and D.C. has relatively small constituencies of conservative religious evangelicals and working-class blue-collar voters who have been sustaining the campaign effort of Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister with a populist political message. So D.C. was tailored made for McCain, who in many other states is still striving to set aside conservative voters' doubts about his "maverick" persona.

Obama's dominance among black voters as he bids to become the nation's first black president alone would have earned him an easy victory in D.C., where blacks make up nearly two-thirds of the population.

Poll closings were delayed in Maryland by 90 minutes because of a traffic-snarling ice storm, but media outlets waited milliseconds after 9:30 to call the Democratic primary for Barack Obama and the Republican primary for John McCain.

Obama's win, his sixth in a row since his virtual draw with Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday, was presaged by his clear victory in Virginia, where polls closed at 7. While exit polling shows Obama winning across demographic boundaries tonight, his overwhelming support among black voters provides him a major building block. So after Obama clinched Virginia, his win in Maryland -- where blacks, in percentage terms, make up a third bigger share of the population -- became a no-brainer.

Clinton lost Maryland even though many of the state's political titans, including Gov. Martin O'Malley and Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, stuck with her.

On the Republican side, Maryland's political demographics appeared to favor McCain and give Huckabee less room for an upset. The GOP electorate in the state, which has a Northeastern orientation, has a larger moderate segment than in states further south, including Virginia. McCain's well-known history as a Vietnam POW and strong supporter of sustaining the U.S. military effort in Iraq also likely gained him support from the large number of Maryland Republicans will military ties.

CQ Politics' Greg Giroux notes the following interesting twist concerning one of Barack Obama's congressional supporters from Virginia....

Rick Boucher, the 13-term House Democrat from Virginia's 9th Congressional District, endorsed Obama in late January. This makes him look very smart everywhere in the state... except his home district.

With about three-quarters of precincts reporting statewide, Obama led Hillary Clinton by 64 percent to 35 percent. He also had big leads in 10 of the state's 11 congressional districts. The one exception: the 9th District, where Clinton was leading Obama by a 2-to-1 ratio.

This outcome, though, is much more of a statement about the district's demographics than Boucher's influence. Clinton, even as her overall results have sagged over recent contests, has done best among the lowest-income voters. And the 9th District, in the rugged Appalachian hill country of southwestern Virginia, is the state's least affluent district.

In addition, Obama's dominance among black voters had its least effect in the 9th. Blacks make up less than 5 percent of the district's population, their lowest share in any of Virginia's districts. Blacks make up about a fifth of the state's total population.

McCain is gaining media consensus as the winner in Virginia, as his narrow lead over Mike Huckabee has remained resilient during the vote count. With 63 percent of precincts reporting on the state elections site, McCain had 47.4 percent to 44 percent for Huckabee.

With two-thirds of precincts counted in Virginia....

451,086 total Democratic votes

223,601 total Republican votes

The swollen Democratic primary ranks in Virginia's open primary appear to have provided a huge boost to Barack Obama in his easy victory over Hillary Clinton. Voters don't register by party in Virginia and are free to vote in either party's primary. And exit polling showed Obama was winning 66 percent to 33 percent among independents, who made up a fifth of the Democratic electorate in Virginia. He did even better — 70 percent to 26 percent — among Republicans, who made up nearly a tenth of respondents who voted in the Democratic primary.

Exit polling shows why underdog Mike Huckabee was able to make such a close race of it against John McCain in Virginia -- results that reflect that the less conservative the voter, the more likely he or she is to vote for McCain.

-- Two-thirds of voters who call themselves very conservative favored Huckabee.

-- Overall, roughly 70% of Republican exit poll respondents called themselves conservative, and Huckabee won about half of their votes.

-- Huckabee outran McCain big among the four in 10 GOP exit poll participants who called themselves born-again evangelical Christians.

-- Although McCain has a consistently anti-abortion voting record, he defeated Huckabee 64% to 24% in the exit poll among voters who said abortion should be legal. Two-thirds of the GOP voters said abortion should be banned, and Huckabee led among them by 58% to 36%.

 

 

The vote count in the Republican race in Virginia remains very close, but at least one network, CBS, says John McCain will pull out the win there.

With just less than three-fifths of precincts reporting, McCain had 46.9 percent of the GOP vote to 44.7 percent for Mike Huckabee, a difference of just less than 5,000 votes, according to the state Board of Elections' Web site. McCain was leading the vote count in seven of Virginia's 11 congressional districts.

Virginia becomes the latest state in which Democratic voters have been much more energized to turn out for their candidates than Republicans are for theirs.

With about a third of all precincts reporting, 153,161 votes had been recorded in the Democratic primary -- more than three-fifths higher than the 94,376 combined votes in the Republican primary.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this disparity is that Virginia does not register voters by party, and their primary therefore was "open," meaning votes of any political persuasion could vote in the party's primary of their choice.

For the sake of comparison, the last time each party held a competitive presidential primary in Virginia was in 2000 for the Republicans and 2004 for the Democrats. The Republican turnout in 2000 was 664,093. The Democratic turnout in 2004 was 396,181.

The primary disparity this year undoubtedly will whet Democratic strategists' ambitions to see if they can put Virginia in play this year, testing a GOP lock that has existed for more than four decades. The last Democratic to win Virginia for president was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and, as in most Southern states, Republicans by the 1990s rose to a position of dominance in Virginia. Democrats have been staging a comeback in recent elections, winning the past two contests for governor, the 2006 race for U.S. Senate and the battle of control of the state Senate in 2007.

But the Democrats would have to take a great leap forward to capture Virginia's 13 electoral votes in November. George W. Bush won by 8 percentage-point margins in the state over both Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.

An unexpectedly severe ice storm and other winter precipitation that hit much of Maryland this afternoon and evening has prompted state officials to extend voting hours to 9:30 p.m -- giving voters delayed by the weather an extra hour and a half to get to the polls.

Barack Obama was running up big margins over Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., a major font of Democratic votes in a state where that party has become increasingly competitive in recent statewide elections. Obama had 69 percent of the vote in the city of Alexandria and 61 percent in Arlington.

Barack Obama is leading Clinton by a 2-to-1 ratio with about one-third of the vote in in Chesterfield County, an area south of Richmond that is the fourth most-populous jurisdiction in Virginia (behind Fairfax County, Virginia Beach and Prince William County).

In the Republican primary, John McCain is leading Mike Huckabee in that county by 49 percent to 43 percent.

 

While the networks didn't hesitate to call the Virginia Democratic contest for Barack Obama, they have held off on a Republican call - based on exit polling showing a close contest between front-runner John McCain and dogged underdog Mike Huckabee.

The two parties' contests have taken very different directions in the wake of last week's Super Tuesday voting spree.

Obama roughly broke even with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Super Tuesday -- which appears to have energized those inclined to support him and who now see him as having a stronger chance of overcoming Clinton's status as the early favorite for the party's nomination. Over the past week, Obama has scored dominating victories in Saturday's Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington state; in the Maine caucuses Sunday; and apparently in today's Virginia primary. He is favored to win today's primaries in Maryland and the District of Columbia, with the 8 p.m, poll closing times in those places near.

The GOP, on the other hand, appears engulfed in a wave of reservations over the emergence of McCain as the big leader in delegate votes locked up. This is especially true among those conservative voters who have long held doubts about McCain because of his efforts to position himself as a "maverick" Republican. Since Super Tuesday, McCain lost Saturday's Louisiana primary and Kansas caucuses to Huckabee, and -- in a controversial early call by Republican officials -- was declared winner of the Washington state caucuses with just 25 percent of the preference vote and an edge of less than 2 percentage points over Huckabee.

A competitive performance by Huckabee in Virginia would fit his campaign profile. The former governor of Arkansas and ordained Southern Baptist preacher has run best among Southern voters in general and among religious conservatives -- a major constituency in the region -- in particular.

While Barack Obama's huge advantage among black voters virtually sealed his projected victory in Virginia, it is very much worth noting that exit polls show a greatly diminished "racial divide" in his contest with Hillary Rodham Clinton. While Obama's huge edge in the black vote was offset to greater or lesser extents by white voters giving majorities to Clinton, CNN reports that Clinton's edge among white voters in Virginia was a statistically insignificant 51 percent to 48 percent.

That also enabled Obama to erase another longstanding Clinton advantage -- among women voters -- that had helped her stay even or slightly better with Obama through the Super Tuesday primaries last week. CNN reported exit poll results showing Obama ahead among Virginia women voters, 58 percent to 42 percent.

The networks wasted no time after polls closed in Virginia to project a win for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama over New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Since exit poll blunders in past election years have made media outlets cautious in using exit polls alone to project victories, the quick call suggests yet another in the string on one-sided wins that Obama has scored in the days since Super Tuesday.

It also looks like a harbinger for Obama wins in the night's other two contests, in Maryland and the District of Columbia (where polls close at 8 p.m.) in the regional event known as the Chesapeake Primary or the Potomac Primary.

Early exit poll readings showed Obama, who is seeking to become the nation's first black president, again dominated among African-Americans in Virginia, taking 90 percent of their votes. And among the three places voting today, blacks make up the smallest population share in Virginia: 19 percent, compared to 28 percent in Maryland and 65 percent in D.C.

 

Here's are the winners of the presidential nominating contests held so far in February:

Democrats

Tuesday, Feb. 5 (Super Tuesday)

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Primaries: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee.

Barack Obama

Primaries: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Utah.

Caucuses: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas and North Dakota.

Winner Still Undetermined

Caucuses: New Mexico

 

Saturday, Feb. 9

Obama

Primary: Louisiana

Caucuses: Nebraska, Washington state

 

Sunday, Feb. 10

Obama

Caucuses: Maine

 

Republicans

Friday, Feb. 1 - Sunday, Feb. 3

Mitt Romney

Caucuses: Maine

 

Tuesday, Feb. 5 (Super Tuesday)

John McCain

Primaries: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma.

Mike Huckabee

Primaries: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee

State Convention: West Virginia

Romney

Primaries: Massachusetts, Utah.

Caucuses: Alaska, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota.

 

Saturday, Feb. 9

Huckabee

Primary: Louisiana

Caucuses: Kansas

McCain

Caucuses: Washington state

It is inarguable that Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee each had an outstanding day on Saturday. Obama trounced Hillary Rodham Clinton in Nebraska, the state of Washington and Louisiana. Huckabee -- trying to emerge as a bona fide alternative to front-runner John McCain before the latter achieves the major number of delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination -- ran rampant in Kansas, was clinging late to a narrow lead in Louisiana, and trailed McCain narrowly in Washington.

The one caveat is that both candidates were running on turf that, as had been seen in earlier events, was favorable to them.

The Nebraska Democrats, Kansas Republicans and both parties in Washington held caucus events Saturday. Caucuses traditionally are conducive to strong showings by candidates with strong activist bases, which is true of both Obama and Huckabee. So it's not surprising they did well in those contests.

The Louisiana primary also was tailor-made for both of these candidates. Obama, who has dominated the African-American vote in voting so far as he seeks to become the nation's first black president, ran in a state in which roughly a third of the residents and a larger percentage of the Democratic electorate are black. Huckabee's strongest showings during the primary and caucus season also have been in his native South, where his background as Southern Baptist minister and his socially conservative views appeal to large numbers of the region's evangelical Christians.

With neither party's nomination locked down by the Super Tuesday results, the campaign trail makes its next stops in four states this Saturday and one on Sunday -- with three events next Tuesday in the so-called "Potomac Primary."

Barack Obama narrowly pulled out a win in Missouri, edging Hillary Rodham Clinton by 49 percent to 48 percent. Associated Press initially called the state for Clinton, but retracted that projection after long-reporting precincts in St. Louis and Kansas City swung the contest to Obama.

To get a sense about how much more driven Democratic voters have been to go to the polls during this nominating campaign than Republicans, get a load of these numbers from New Jersey....

With nearly all precincts reporting, nearly 1.1 million voters participated in the state's Democratic primary, which Hillary Rodham Clinton won by 54 percent to 44 percent for Barack Obama. That was double the roughly 550,000 turnout in the Republican primary, which John McCain won by 56 percent to 28 percent to Mitt Romney.

The dropout of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani may have been a bit of a mitigating factor in the Republican race, as he was expected to be highly competitive in New Jersey. Giuliani, who strongly endorsed McCain after he withdrew from the race following his loss in last week's Florida primary, took 3 percent.

Hillary Rodham Clinton won fewer Super Tuesday events than Barack Obama, but she won the two biggest prizes, scoring a projected victory in California to complement her victory in her home state of New York. Obama's biggest prize was his home state of Illinois, followed by Georgia.

John McCain wrapped up a big night with wins in California, the night's biggest prize, and Missouri, two winner-take-all delegate states.

Oklahoma Democrats, like their partisan partners in other primary states, turned out in unusually strong numbers for a primary that Hillary Clinton won by 55 percent to 31 percent for Barack Obama.

With nearly all precincts reporting, total votes in the Democratic primary was slightly more than 400,000. The turnout for the Feb. 3, 2004 primary was just 302,385, even though the state was hotly contested by the winner, former Gen. Wesley Clark; runner-up John Edwards, then a senator from North Carolina; and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

Turnout for Tuesday's Republican primary in Oklahoma was 320,410.

 

CQ Politics' Michael Teitelbaum on what the exit polls say about how the Missouri Democratic primary ended up a neck-and-neck contest:

Hillary Rodham Clinton had a 51%-45% advantage among women, who made up 55% of the Democratic primary electorate. Barack Obama by 46%-42% among men. Obama did well among younger voters, Clinton won with middle-aged and older voters.

Obama, as usual, did very well among African-Americans, winning them by 75%-21% percent over Clinton. Blacks made up only 15 percent of the voters, while whites, who made up four-fifths, gave their votes to Clinton by 53%-38%.

Clinton won by 52%-40% among those under who do not have a college degree, who make up nearly two-thirds of the voters while Obama by a 2-to-1 ratio (62%-31%) was favored among those with a college degree.

 

When breaking down by income, Clinton did well with lower income voters, specifically those who make under $50,000, while Obama does better with higher income voters.

When it came to the important issues, the exit polling said that the economy was the top issue to 54% of the voters and on that, Clinton won by 9 points, 51-42.

While 42 percent of the voters said they were ideologically liberal and they supported Obama, 54-39%, Clinton over moderate Demcrats, who were 49 percent of the voters, by a 50-41%.

Finally, except for St. Louis, the surrounding county (St. Louis County), Cole County which includes Jefferson City, the state's capital, Jackson County (which includes KC and Independence) and Boone County (which includes Columbia), Clinton did very well in the rural areas and in Greene County (which includes Springfield) and the southern St. Louis suburbs of Jefferson County and the northern ones in St. Charles County. She won Buchanan County, in the western part of the state (which incudes St. Joseph).

CQ Politics' Marc Rehmann reports:

 

Exit polls show John McCain with a significant lead among almost every income bracket. On the Democrat side, Clinton and Obama are neck-and-neck, with lower-income voters supporting Clinton and higher-income voters supporting Obama. If income is an indication, Clinton would be projected the favorite by a small margin, since more voters are in the lower-middle income bracket than higher-middle income bracket.

Excerpts from Arizona Sen. John McCain's Super Tuesday night speech:

"Tonight, my friends, we've won a number of important victories in the biggest primary"