Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) won the Pennsylvania primary yesterday by 10 percentage points, an ample margin to keep her campaign rolling but not wide enough to considerably slash Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) significant delegate lead.
Clinton won 55 percent of the vote to Obama's 45. Recent polls had shown her with a lead as low as five or six percentage points in the Keystone State, where at one time she had appeared to be ahead by about 20.
Michael Goldman, a political science lecturer who worked for over 20 years as a political consultant, said the win was enough to keep her candidacy alive. Still, it is "seemingly impossible for her to catch up to Barack Obama," he said.
"Even though she [won] by 10 percent, she will not probably gain more than five additional delegates, and in the end this race is not about who won the most states or who has the most popular votes or who, if you add up the electoral votes, would win. It's who would have the most delegates," Goldman said.
An Associated Press tally before the primary showed Obama with a sizeable advantage in convention delegates, with 1,648 to Clinton's 1,509.
Democratic Party rules require Pennsylvania to award its 158 pledged delegates proportionately by congressional district, with greater representation for districts that vote heavily Democratic. That gives more delegates to districts with large black populations, which Obama won overwhelmingly.
Clinton celebrated the victory with supporters in Philadelphia, where she vowed to fight her way to the nomination. "I might stumble and I might get knocked down, but as long as you'll stand with me, I'll always get right back up because for me, in the end, the question isn't whether we can keep America's promise, it's whether we will keep America's promise," Clinton said, playing on Obama's campaign slogan, "Yes we can."
The crowd responded with a chant of, "Yes we will."
MCT reports contributed to this article.
