Barack Obama won Maryland's Democratic primary yesterday, continuing his post-Super Tuesday winning streak and building momentum in a race that is still closely matched in delegates.
He won 57.4% of the vote to Hillary Clinton's 38.9%, as of publication of this article, according to results released by the Maryland State Board of Elections. Last night's win helped him surpass Clinton in overall delegates, according to CNN's estimate.
After media projections had him taking Maryland, Virginia and D.C. late last night, Obama delivered a victory speech from Madison, WI.
"The cynics can no longer say that our hope is false," he said to a crowd of supporters.
Both candidates made campaign stops in the state in the days leading up to the primary. On Monday, more than 10,000 showed up for Obama's Baltimore rally, which was held at the University of Maryland. Clinton, drawing attention back to the economy, toured a General Motors auto plant in White Marsh.
A judge had extended voting by 90 minutes, with polls closing at 9:30 p.m. instead of the planned 8 p.m., because of weather-related traffic incidents, but it is still unclear what impact that had on the results.
CNN exit polls did, however, indicate some of the voting trends in Maryland yesterday. For one thing, a majority of voters were women, but Hillary did not get the majority of their votes as she has often done this primary season. She did take a bare majority of white voters, but it wasn't nearly enough to make up for Obama's more than 80 percent of the African American vote. Clinton had a majority of white women voters in her camp, but was behind with white men, black men and black women. Perhaps most surprisingly for those who would attribute Obama's Maryland win to momentum, he had less support among voters who had made up their minds in the last three days than among those who had already picked their candidate before that -- although he still came out on top in both categories.
Having lost to Obama consistently since Super Tuesday, Clinton's campaign is counting on strong wins in Ohio and Texas on March 4. Clinton was in El Paso, TX last night, where she focused her attention on that important day.
"We have a lot of work to do, and I know that El Paso understands that picking a president is one of the most important jobs we're going to do in this country in the next couple of weeks," she said, before turning her attention to substantive goals such as the creation of millions of new jobs nationwide, including "jobs that will be right here in El Paso, right here in Texas."