Obama takes Maine Caucuses

Voter turnout in parts of Maine was reported to be strong on Sunday afternoon, despite a snowstorm. The Portland Press Herald reported on its Web site that there were long lines at the caucus in Portland, while a large crowd in Cape Elizabeth delayed the start of the caucus there by more than an hour.

Obama's victory in Maine follows those in Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska on Saturday. Combined with his advantage in fund-raising, these victories should give him momentum going the primaries on Tuesday in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC.

Clinton's defeat in Maine came on the same day as her campaign manager stepped down. A Clinton spokesman said the departure of Patti Solis Doyle as campaign manager was not a shakeup, and Solis Doyle said in an e-mail statement that she would serve as a senior adviser to the campaign. She will be replaced by Maggie Williams, another senior adviser to the campaign.

Senator Barack Obama defeated Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Maine caucuses on Sunday, giving him his fourth victory this weekend as he headed into three more state contests on Tuesday.

With 90 percent of Maine's precincts reporting, Obama received 58.7 percent of the vote, compared with 40.7 percent for Clinton.

While Obama had been expected to win the contests on Saturday, the margin of his victories were surprising, particularly in Nebraska and Washington, which offered the day's biggest trove of delegates. In both states, he captured 68 percent of the vote in caucuses, compared with Clinton's roughly 32 percent. In Louisiana, Obama won 57 percent, to Clinton's 36 percent.

"We won in Louisiana, we won in Nebraska, we won in Washington state," Obama said Saturday at the Virginia Democrats' Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Richmond, Virginia. "We won North, we won South, we won in between. And I believe that we can win in Virginia on Tuesday if you're ready to stand for change."

Obama and Clinton both campaigned in Virginia on Sunday.

While Obama's victories are significant, the Democratic Party awards delegates proportionally, so Clinton stands to walk away from the contests with a considerable number. The Associated Press estimated that Obama won 69 delegates in the three states on Saturday, while Clinton won 40 delegates. The AP also estimated that Obama won at least 13 more delegates in the Maine caucuses, while Clinton won at least eight more delegates.

Both campaigns have dug in for a long and fierce delegate fight.

Clinton's advisers had predicted she might not win any of the contests in February, and said she was looking ahead to March 4, when voters in Rhode Island and particularly Ohio and Texas will decide the next big bloc of delegates.

With the fight for the nomination extending beyond the 22 contests last Tuesday, voters in a fresh batch of states have suddenly found themselves in the thick of the most competitive primary in a generation. In past years they tended to cast their votes well after the nominee was effectively chosen.

On Saturday, with the contest so close, excitement ran high, as did turnout.

In Nebraska, The Omaha World-Herald reported that organizers at two caucus sites had been so overrun by crowds that they abandoned traditional caucusing and asked voters to drop makeshift scrap-paper ballots into a box instead. In Sarpy County, in suburban Omaha, traffic backed up on Highway 370 when thousands of voters showed up at a precinct where organizers had planned for hundreds.

In the Republican contests on Saturday, Mike Huckabee won the caucuses in Kansas and, by the barest of margins, the Louisiana primary, in a setback for Senator John McCain as he tries to rally the party around him as its nominee. But in Washington, the state party declared McCain the winner of its caucuses on Saturday night, after a close race with Huckabee.

McCain's opponents have tried to cast doubt on his appeal to conservative voters throughout the campaign. But on "Fox News Sunday," President George W. Bush said emphatically that McCain was a conservative, although the president noted that the Arizona senator "has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative, and I'll be glad to help him if he is the nominee."

"I know his convictions," Bush said. "I know the principles that drive him and no doubt in my mind that he is a true conservative."