Obama, Hillary head-to-head; McCain may be unstoppable. A USA Today national poll gave McCain a 42 per cent to 24 per cent lead over Mitt Romney.
First polls opened before dawn in New York state, at 6 am IST and last voting will wrap up in California 17 hours later, leaving candidates with a late-night vigil to learn their fates.
Washington, February 5
A surging Barack Obama and weary White House rival Hillary Clinton
battled coast-to-coast on Tuesday, while John McCain tried to lock down the Republican ticket, in a historic 24-state nominating showdown.
In the tense final hours before polling began on “Super Tuesday,” Clinton, wracked by fatigue after a punishing year on the campaign trail, and
Obama, energized by new polls showing him wiping out her once-gaping lead, wooed undecided Democrats.
| A USA Today national poll gave McCain a 42 per cent to 24 per cent lead over Romney, with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on 18 per cent. But Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, refused to admit defeat. “This is going to come down to a real battle and I think I’m going to win it,” he said in Nashville, Tennessee.
“Super Tuesday” states account for more than half the Democratic delegates and almost half of Republican delegates at party conventions in August and September, which formally nominate candidates for November’s general election. There are 24 Democratic contests and 21 on the Republican side, with 19 states hosting nominating clashes for both parties.
A clutch of new polls showed the Democratic race a neck-and-neck struggle. Clinton clung to a 45-44 point lead in a USA Today/Gallup national poll. A CBS/New York Times poll had the race deadlocked at 41 per cent.
— AP |
To wild chants of “O-ba-ma” and “We can't wait” the 46-year-old Illinois senator rocked an indoor arena packed with 16,000 supporters in the closely-fought state of Connecticut, then repeated the trick in Boston. Musing on his presidential odyssey, Obama, on a hope-fueled crusade for political change, said Americans “don’t want spin, they don't want PR, they want straight talk.”
After a clutch of single-state contests, “Super Tuesday” embraces millions of voters from across racial, religious, social and income barriers, in states as diverse as liberal
Massachusetts and “deep south” conservative bastions. It is the
toughest test yet in the most expensive, intense, prolonged and
unpredictable White House race ever, which will see Democrats eventually
break a deadlock and pick the first black or woman presidential nominee.
First polls opened before dawn in New York state, at 6:00 am (1100
GMT) and last voting will wrap up in California 17 hours later, leaving
candidates with a late-night vigil to learn their fates.
Clinton and
Obama dueled with campaign rallies and television advertising blitzes
across the political map, with the race narrowing in her stronghold,
California, tight in heartland Missouri and Tennessee, and up for grabs
in northeastern New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
But barring
a major surprise, even “Super Tuesday,” the biggest one-day
nominating bonanza ever, is unlikely to install Clinton or Obama just
yet: their close state-by-state race looks set to go on until at least
March.
Clinton was to vote early Tuesday at her home state of New
York, while Obama was returning to Chicago to watch results roll in.
Earlier, her voice raw and fatigue creasing her face, the former first
lady brushed away a tear as she visited Yale University, where her
political odyssey started as an earnest 1970s student in bell-bottom
pants.
Clinton, 60, held an online town hall meeting also broadcast on
a cable television channel, taking questions from across “Super
Tuesday” states. “It’s going to take someone with experience in
running and winning campaigns to take the White House in November,”
Clinton said.
Earlier, on talk show host David Letterman’s couch,
she said she, not former president Bill Clinton, would be the boss if
she wins November’s election. “In my White House we will know who
wears the pant suits,” she quipped. The cliffhanger Democratic race
contrasted with signs that McCain, a Vietnam war hero, would all but
settle the Republican nominating fight Tuesday, to complete one of the
most staggering comebacks in recent US political history. — AP
