US votes coast-to-coast on biggest-ever primary day

Feb 5, 2008, 17:52 GMT

US Democratic presidential hopeful, Illinois Senator Barack Obama. EPA/JUSTIN LANE

Washington - Voting got under way Tuesday in the biggest- ever round of US primaries, a coast-to-coast contest in a record 24 states that could decide which two candidates clash in the November election to replace President George W Bush.

Even as polls opened on the East Coast, Democratic and Republican candidates made last-minute pitches on morning television shows and readied for a final round of campaign stops after frantically criss- crossing the country for days ahead of Super Tuesday.

African-American Barack Obama, 46, and former first lady Hillary Clinton, 60, both US senators, were running neck-and-neck for the Democratic nomination and the chance to retake the White House for their party.

For the centre-right Republicans, Vietnam War veteran John McCain, 71, battled former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, 60, with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, 52, in third place as a possible power broker.

Some of the biggest prizes are in play Tuesday, led by California, New York, Illinois and New Jersey. Under party rules, each state awards delegates to a nominating convention in the summer, and both parties are choosing about half their delegates Tuesday.

After tens of millions of dollars in campaign spending, increasingly sharp rhetoric and a month of single-state primaries, Super Tuesday is the biggest event yet in the most wide-open US presidential election in decades.

But because Democrats award delegates mostly according to a contender's share of the vote in each state, Tuesday could end with Obama and Clinton still locked in battle for the centre-left party's nomination.

Obama has conceded that Clinton is favoured to win California, but said 'we're going to get our share of delegates and our share of state victories.'

'Right now, I think we're in a pretty fierce contest,' he told ABC television early Tuesday.

National polls showed Obama gaining momentum ahead of Tuesday's vote, moving into a statistical tie with Clinton. Nine more states hold Democratic preference votes later in February.

McCain, a US senator from Arizona, has surged to the lead in the Republican field.

Republican Party rules that give the first-place finisher the entire delegation in a handful of winner-take-all states could help him nail down the nomination Tuesday, though his two major rivals could also splinter the vote.

Obama, son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother, has emerged as perhaps the most exciting new face in the 2008 race.

He and Clinton have battled for weeks as both camps sharpened the contrast between Obama's lofty message of change - a powerful vote- getter in a nation weary of Bush and the Iraq war - and Clinton's greater political experience.

It's also a clash between the ageing generation of Vietnam-era baby boomers and younger voters attracted by Obama, who seems unburdened by that time's ideological battles and eager to transcend the US's racial divisions.

Clinton has scorned Obama's talk of change as vague and said she would know what to do in the White House from the first day.

'It's not a choice between change and experience,' she told ABC. 'I have the experience to make the changes we need.'

While US voters are clearly in the mood for change, the Democratic nominee is far from assured of victory in the November 4 presidential election.

In the critical battle for independent voters, largely moderates who swing between the two major parties, polls suggest McCain would be a strong match for Clinton or Obama.

Unlike Democrats and many Republicans, McCain backed Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, but that may be less of an obstacle as the flagging US economy becomes a top campaign issue.

While conservative on social issues such as abortion, McCain has pressed Bush to renounce torture, favours stronger steps to combat global warming and touts his foreign policy experience.

'Even though John McCain is the conservative with definitely an independent streak, Republican voters trust him,' Nancy Pfotenhauer, a McCain campaign adviser, claimed on Fox News television.