After Tuesday, Clinton, Obama begin anew

Obama seemed to benefit from Edwards' departure, expanding his support among white voters from one in four in the South Carolina primary to better than two out of five across the 16 primary states. "She has ceiling issues, and the people who aren't for her we think are very available to us," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters Tuesday.

But Clinton had reason to cheer as well. She beat Obama in Massachusetts despite Obama's strength among highly educated voters and opponents of the war and high-profile endorsements from the state's political power troika — U.S. Sens. Edward Kennedy, John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick.

She also won in Missouri, a hard-fought battleground that serves as a national political bellwether.

With five states still undeclared, both candidates had won six primaries each. Obama also won three state caucuses to Clinton's one. Clinton also won the caucus in American Samoa.

The biggest outstanding prize was California, with 370 delegates. Obama was leading in the state among white voters, but Clinton had overwhelming support from Hispanics and Asians, who together comprised nearly four in 10 California voters.

The 22 states holding contests, as well as American Samoa, offer 1,681 Democratic delegates. A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

Democrats award delegates proportionally in every state. That means the second-place finisher who gets at least 15 percent of the vote also will win delegates. Indeed, even if a candidate wins the popular vote in a state by a wide margin, the edge on delegates could be significantly smaller.

The counting was just beginning.

Picking the president: The candidates Click to visit that candidate's MSNBC page or click the XML symbol for an RSS feed. John McCain                Barack Obama

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