Analysis: Just the start of a nomination marathon for Democrat rivals

Hillary Rodham Clinton captured needed states on Super Tuesday - including delegate-rich California - even as Barack Obama ate into her traditional base of support on a topsy-turvy night in which ballot victories were not the only measure of success.

The grand spectacle of the coast-to-coast nominating contests marked a turning point in the Democratic presidential contest, from euphoric election-night victories to painstaking delegate counting. Consider it the beginning of a long hard slog.

The two candidates seesawed their way across the landscape, trading triumph and loss in state after state. Clinton won in the delegate-rich states of New Jersey, Massachusetts and New York, her home state. Obama answered with wins in Georgia, Alabama and his own home state of Illinois.

Altogether, 22 states were in play but neither candidate could emerge with enough delegates to secure the nomination. Clinton led with 471 delegates in incomplete results Tuesday, while Obama captured 437.

Both were winning in all regions of the country - Obama held an advantage in the Midwest and the Plains states, and Clinton in the Northeast. The two split the South. With two state results still undetermined, Obama had won 12 states and Clinton had won eight.

By securing California, Clinton took the biggest prize of all — a state with 370 delegates at stake. Ethnic support proved decisive for her in the state — she won support from seven in 10 Hispanics and three-quarters of Asian voters.

Clinton also stemmed what appeared to have been an Obama surge fueled by his victory in South Carolina, the endorsements of high-profile members of the Kennedy family and a banner fundraising month.

"Tonight in record numbers you voted not just to make history but to remake America," Clinton said.

Obama encroached on Clinton's voting base and put to rest any questions about his ability to win white votes. The Illinois senator had more than four in 10 women and about the same number of whites supporting him. Moreover, he and Clinton split the vote of white men evenly, an improvement for Obama over his performance with that group in most primaries so far.

Those results augured well for Obama in contests in coming weeks.

"There is one thing on this February night that we don't need the final results to know — our time has come," Obama said after polls closed in California. "Our time has come. Our movement is real, and change is coming to America."

The campaigns, like sports teams that have clinched a playoff spot, already have been preparing for the matches ahead. Obama has been advertising in states with primaries and caucuses over the next seven days where the terrain seems to favour him. Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, all of which hold primaries on 12 February, play to Obama's strengths with blacks and upscale, educated voters.

Clinton strategists were looking over the horizon into March and April and counting on her coalition to come through for her in the Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania primaries.

Time could work against Clinton, however. Obama raised $32 million to her $13.5 million in January — a financial edge that will help him organise and advertise in the upcoming battlegrounds. Yesterday, her campaign called for four debates between now and 4 March, a sign that she wants to make up for her financial disadvantage with free media.

Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe predicted Clinton's fundraising would get a boost from her successes last night night. "There will be a lot of people who will say this woman is for real," he said on MSNBC.

After a month of early contests - from Iowa to New Hampshire to Nevada to South Carolina - the two candidates have essentially divided the electorate into two component parts. He gets young voters, educated voters, black voters. She gets women, working-class voters and Hispanics.

Both candidates have worked hard to win over supporters of former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, who dropped out of the presidential race last Wednesday after a third-place finish in South Carolina. They spent a combined $20 million on advertising in Super Tuesday states. Their respective messages found their audiences. Clinton had about a 10 percentage point edge over Obama as the Democrat best qualified to be commander in chief. He had a similar margin over her as the candidates most likely to unite the country.

Obama seemed to benefit from Edwards' departure, expanding his support among white voters from one in four in the South Carolina primary to better than two out of five across the 16 primary states. "She has ceiling issues, and the people who aren't for her we think are very available to us," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters yesterday.

But Clinton had reason to cheer as well. She beat Obama in Massachusetts despite Obama's strength among highly educated voters and opponents of the war and high-profile endorsements from the state's political power troika US Senators Edward Kennedy, John Kerry and Govenor Deval Patrick.

The 22 states holding contests, as well as American Samoa, offer 1,681 Democratic delegates. A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

Democrats award delegates proportionally in every state. That means the second-place finisher who gets at least 15 per cent of the vote also will win delegates. Indeed, even if a candidate wins the popular vote in a state by a wide margin, the edge in delegates could be significantly smaller.

The counting was just beginning.