John McCain, who has wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination, won easily in his party's primary.
Obama remains a heavy favorite to be the Democratic candidate against McCain in November. However, his increasing inability to win big swing states in the closing phase of the campaign is raising questions about the breadth of his appeal and about his chances in the general election.
Yesterday afternoon, during a visit to a South Philadelphia cheese steak emporium, Obama acknowledged that he couldn't claim victory simply by holding down Clinton's winning margin.
"If Senator Clinton gets over 50 percent, she's won the state. I don't try to pretend I enjoy getting 45 percent and that's a moral victory. We've lost the state," he told XM Radio's POTUS '08 channel at Pat's King of Steaks.
The next state primaries are May 6 in North Carolina and Indiana, and Obama was in Evansville, Ind., last night when the returns were coming in.
Clinton hoped to leave Pennsylvania with a large enough bulge in popular votes to impress the party's superdelegates and her own donors. Her last finance report showed that her campaign was in debt at the end of March, while Obama had $42 million to spend.
Clinton's campaign said just before midnight that it had raised nearly $2.5 million on election night and called it its "best night ever."
As expected, Clinton carried northeastern Pennsylvania, where her father was raised and she spent summers as a child, and ran extremely well in the more conservative central and western portions of the state, including the Pittsburgh area.
Her strong showing in those areas overcame Obama's lead in Philadelphia and its suburbs, which he took by substantial proportions but not as large as his campaign had hoped.
"The voters trust Hillary Clinton," her campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, said in a television interview. "They think she'll do a better job of getting this economy straightened out. ... She's ready to be president."
Preliminary estimates indicated that the candidates would divide the state's 158 delegates roughly evenly, with Clinton gaining fewer than 20 delegates overall.
Going into the election, she trailed Obama by about 140 delegates. About 400 delegates will be allocated in the remaining contests, with party rules ensuring a proportional division that effectively makes it impossible for Clinton to finish ahead of Obama in delegates won in the primaries and caucuses.
