Senator Barack Obama swept four contests in his historic and deadlocked battle with Senator Hillary Clinton, slicing into his chief rival's slim delegate lead and completing his best night of the Democratic presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee snatched two victories on Saturday from presumptive Republican candidate Senator John McCain. Although his wins in Kansas and Louisiana were no threat to McCain's frontrunner status, it reflected the difficulty McCain faces in wooing the party's core conservative bloc. McCain won the night's third Republican race, in Washington state.
Obama won the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington state, while also notching a victory in the US Virgin Islands. The first-term senator's winning margins were substantial, ranging from roughly two-thirds of the vote in Washington and Nebraska to nearly 90 percent in the Virgin Islands.
Nearly complete returns from Louisiana -- where many voters are still recovering from hardships created by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 -- showed Obama with 57 percent of the vote, to 36 percent for Clinton.
"Today, voters from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast to the heart of America stood up to say `yes, we can,'" Obama told a cheering audience of Democrats at a party dinner in Richmond, Virginia.
He jabbed simultaneously at Clinton and McCain, saying the election was a choice between debating the Republican nominee-in-waiting "about who has the most experience in Washington, or debating him about who's most likely to change Washington. Because that's a debate we can win."
Clinton preceded Obama to the podium. She did not refer to the night's voting, instead turning against McCain.
"We have tried it President [George W.] Bush's way," the former first lady said, "and now the Republicans have chosen more of the same."
She left quickly after her speech, departing before Obama's arrival. But his supporters made their presence known, sending up chants of "Obama" from the audience as she made her way offstage.
As in his earlier Southern triumphs in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, Obama, rode a wave of African-American support to victory in Louisiana. Clinton won most of the white vote.
In all, the Democrats scrapped for 161 delegates in the night's contests. In incomplete allocations, Obama won 72, Clinton 40.
In overall totals in the Associated Press count, Clinton had 1,095 delegates to 1,070 for Obama, counting so-called superdelegates. They are party leaders not chosen at primaries or caucuses, free to change their minds. A total of 2,025 delegates is required to win the nomination at the national convention in Denver in late August.
McCain faltered in his first ballot test since his stellar showing in the Super Tuesday races drove his main rival Mitt Romney out of the running and made him the candidate-in-waiting.
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