Clinton Lends Millions to Her Campaign

WASHINGTON — A $5 million loan from her personal bank account and a strong showing in California and her home state of New York were enough to get Senator Clinton a narrow majority of the votes cast by Democrats on the highly anticipated Super Tuesday, but they appear to have fallen short of gaining her a majority of the delegates chosen in the day's primaries and caucuses or a clear claim to the Democratic nomination.

As the dust cleared yesterday, the disclosure of the loan was the news of the day.

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"I loaned the campaign $5 million from my money," Mrs. Clinton told reporters at a news conference yesterday. "That's where I got the money. I did it because I believe very strongly in this campaign, and we had a great month fund-raising in January, broke all our records, but my opponent was able to raise more money and we intended to be competitive – and we were – and I think the results last night proved the wisdom of my investment."

Mr. Obama's campaign announced last week that he raised $32 million in January, the most any campaign has collected in a single month and more than twice what the Clinton campaign raised.

The loan raised fresh doubts about Mrs. Clinton's fund-raising ability going forward, and the Obama campaign seized on it to claim momentum in a deadlocked race. The campaign manager, David Plouffe, quickly dispatched a fund-raising appeal to Obama supporters. "We need to match this $5 million personal contribution from the Clintons immediately and put these resources to work in the states that will vote next," he wrote.

As advisers to both campaigns counted delegates and analyzed the results of Super Tuesday, a picture emerged of a Democratic Party split down the middle, with support for the candidates cleaving along racial and gender lines. The tallies also underscored the limited value even of major endorsements and how the campaigns employed distinct strategies with equal success.

Perhaps the most telling morsel of all was that with more than 14 million Democrats casting ballots in 22 states across the country, fewer than 100,000 votes separated Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, representing less than one-half of one percentage point.

Mrs. Clinton won major prizes in California, New York, and New Jersey, helped in large measure by Latino voters, 63% of whom supported her over Mr. Obama, according to exit polls. In California alone, Latino voters made up 30% of the Democratic electorate and nearly 70% went for the former first lady, the polls indicated.

Fifty-three percent of women voters also stuck with Mrs. Clinton, while the two candidates split white male voters following the withdrawal of John Edwards, according to the Associated Press exit surveys.

Black voters backed Mr. Obama to an even greater extent, with eight in 10 voting for him nationwide and contributing heavily to his landslide victory in Georgia and a 14-point win in neighboring Alabama.

Overall, Mr. Obama won 13 states overall to eight for Mrs. Clinton, with the results in New Mexico still too close to call yesterday.

Tuesday's vote also reflected strategic choices made by each campaign. In addition Mr. Obama won all seven states that held caucuses instead of primaries by wide margins, allowing him to rack up extra delegates that are awarded proportionally in the Democratic Party. He won with a full two-thirds of the vote in Colorado and Minnesota, and nearly three-fourths in Kansas, helping him to close the delegate edge that Mrs. Clinton gained with narrower victories in larger states.

Mrs. Clinton maintained an edge, 784 to 764, in the Associated Press tally of pledged delegates awarded during Tuesday's election as of last evening, but several hundred delegates remained to be allotted, and both the Obama campaign and NBC News were projecting that the Illinois senator would wind up winning the Super Tuesday delegate battle. The Clinton campaign was left to cite its continued advantage in the increasingly important superdelegates. Including those party leaders who have committed, she tops Mr. Obama in the overall delegate count, 1,045 to 960, according to the AP. A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to clinch the nomination.

A clearer portrait emerged on the Republican side, where Senator McCain's total of 707 delegates was more than twice as much as either of his nearest rivals, Mitt Romney or Michael Huckabee. He won nine states Tuesday, including New York, New Jersey, California, and Missouri, where he narrowly held off Mr. Huckabee to win all 58 of the state's delegates.

Messrs. Romney and Huckabee have vowed to stay in the race, but each faces a difficult path to the nomination, given the number of delegates still at stake.

Among Democrats, advisers to Mr. Obama credited his decision to spend the final days before Super Tuesday hopping from state to state instead of making a sustained play for the large contests that Mrs. Clinton won, notably California and New York. He built up large organizations to focus on the caucus states, and secured landslide victories — and greater delegate margins — with large rallies in places like Idaho and Minnesota. "We won more states, and we won more delegates," Mr. Plouffe told reporters in a conference call.

The Clinton campaign countered by citing her victories in the largest states that will be most crucial for the Democrats to win in November. In a memo to reporters, strategist Mark Penn said she had shown strength nationwide in demographics that had been previously considered weaknesses, such as rural and young voters. They were especially proud to win Massachusetts, where Mr. Obama had received the high-profile endorsements of Senators Kennedy and Kerry, along with the Democratic governor, Deval Patrick.

Ultimately they pointed to a sustained delegate edge, when superdelegates are included. "We predicted we would be ahead in delegates overall and we are ahead in delegates overall," Mr. Penn wrote.