WASHINGTON — Sen. Barack Obama won the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary Tuesday night, extending his winning streak to nine straight contests over the past 10 days and dealing another blow to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose candidacy now is likely to depend on the outcome of contests in Ohio and Texas in two weeks.
Full results from Democratic caucuses in Hawaii were unavailable Tuesday night, but Obama was favored to win.
The New York senator had looked to blunt Obama’s momentum in Wisconsin but has made clear she will take a decisive stand against her rival in Ohio and Texas and possibly Pennsylvania in April.
Republican John McCain cruised to a comfortable victory in Wisconsin and criticized Obama in a clear indication he’s betting that the Democrat will be his opponent.
“I’m not the youngest candidate. But I am the most experienced,” the 71-year-old Arizona senator said, trying to draw a contrast with 46-year-old Obama, the senator from Illinois.
McCain has all but secured the nomination and his victory over GOP opponent Mike Huckabee simply put him closer to officially clinching the 1,191 delegates needed to win the Republican crown. McCain is hoping to seize an advantage for the general election while Obama and Clinton continue to fight for their own party nod.
“Thank you, Wisconsin, for bringing us to the point where even a superstitious naval aviator can claim with confidence and humility that I will be our party’s nominee for president of the United States,” McCain said after watching the results in Ohio, which holds its primary on March 4 and is a key general election battleground.
In scarcely veiled criticism of Obama, the Republican nominee-in-waiting said, “I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure that Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change.”
There were 74 Democratic delegates at stake in Wisconsin, along with 20 in Hawaii, where that state’s caucuses were being held in the evening, Pacific time. Obama had a lead in delegates awarded in the primaries and caucuses going into Tuesday’s balloting and, when superdelegates — Congress members, governors and other party officials with automatic credentials for the Democratic National Convention — are included, he was still ahead, but by a narrower margin.
“The change we seek is still months and miles away,” Obama told a boisterous crowd in Houston in a Tuesday night speech in which he also pledged to end the war in Iraq in his first year in office.
In a race growing increasingly negative, Obama cut deeply into Clinton’s political bedrock in Wisconsin, splitting the support of white women almost evenly with her. According to polling place interviews, he also ran well among working class voters in the blue collar battleground that was prelude to primaries in the larger industrial states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The two wrangled with back-to-back appearances at a Democratic Party dinner Saturday night in Milwaukee. Clinton indirectly questioned whether Obama is experienced enough or tough enough to serve as president. He accused her of making false statements about his health-care plan and closed with a sharp rebuttal to the charge that he gives good speeches but is not able to deliver on his promises.
His oratorical flourish brought the audience to its feet, but it turned out that his words originated not with him, but with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a friend and supporter of Obama’s. Patrick had used almost identical language in October 2006 during his gubernatorial campaign.
The Clinton camp accused Obama of committing plagiarism, and while Obama defended his right to take the advice of his friend, he acknowledged that he had erred in not crediting Patrick.
Wisconsin results
Republicans
John McCain: 55 percent
Mike Huckabee: 37 percent
Ron Paul: 5 percent
Others: 4 percent
Democrats
Barack Obama: 58 percent
Hillary Rodham Clinton: 41 percent
Others: 1 percent
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