"I am thrilled to have had this vote of confidence that you have given me today," the New York senator told a raucous election-night crowd in Dania, Fla., an event beamed nationwide on cable television.
However, exit poll data contained cautionary notes for Clinton's campaign. Her advantage in the nonbinding vote largely reflected ballots cast by absentee or early voters. She and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois split the vote of those who made up their minds in the past week.
Perhaps more worrisome for Clinton, one in four Democratic voters said that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's recent endorsement of Obama was very important to their decision, and Obama swept those voters by a margin of more than 2-to-1.
