The contest was the first of four Tuesday, with Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton expected to compete much more closely in delegate-rich Texas and Ohio, where Clinton needs strong performances to halt Obama's momentum and keep her hopes for the White House alive.
In exit polling of 609 Vermont voters, Obama took 64 percent of the votes in Vermont, compared with 35 percent for Clinton.
But all eyes remained on Texas and Ohio on Tuesday.
Clinton was banking on strong Latino support in Texas to keep alive her hopes of winning the Democratic presidential nomination -- and early results of CNN's polling shows roughly two-thirds of those votes going her way.
The sampling shows Clinton taking the votes of 64 percent of self-described Latino voters, compared with 35 percent for Obama. In the early polling, 1,453 Texans who voted in Tuesday's Democratic primary were questioned.
If Clinton, who along with her ex-president husband has long-standing ties in the Hispanic community, was the favorite among those voters, Obama was the clear choice among black voters in Texas, the polling suggests.
Eighty-three percent of the black voters polled in the state said they supported Obama, compared with 16 percent for Clinton.
Those two groups represent the back-and-forth contest between Clinton and Obama among multiple demographics in Tuesday's poll results, said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider.
"We're seeing lots of lines of division in contest after contest," he said.
Texas, with its 193 Democratic delegates, and Ohio, with 141, are the biggest prizes in Tuesday's four contests. There are 15 Democratic delegates at stake in Vermont and 21 in Rhode Island. Watch the senators talk about their Texas showdown »
Obama began the day with momentum on his side, thanks to his string of 11 straight victories in contests dating back nearly a month.
He had just over a 100-delegate lead, with 1,369 pledged delegates and superdelegates to Clinton's 1,267, according to CNN estimates. A candidate needs 2,025 delegates to win the Democratic nomination.
"The real measurement tonight ... is not whether or not Hillary Clinton can win Ohio or Texas," said Sen. John Kerry, an Obama supporter. "It's whether she wins by a large enough margin to win the nomination. She has to win by a very big number for the math to work over the course of the next week."
Clinton supporters, meanwhile, were saying a strong performance of any sort would keep her campaign alive. Weeks ago, former President Bill Clinton had predicted his wife would need wins in both Texas and Ohio to stay in the race.
"If Hillary Clinton gets out a small win in Ohio and Texas, it will be like Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow," said political adviser and Clinton supporter Paul Begala, referring to the six more weeks of winter the groundhog is said to predict.
In Ohio, a predominantly blue-collar state where manufacturing jobs have been steadily moving overseas, both Clinton and Obama have campaigned on their opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement -- which critics blame for the loss of some of those jobs.
Exit polling showed trade was on the minds of many Democratic voters in Ohio on Tuesday.
Among 1,020 Democratic voters polled, 81 percent said they think trade with other countries causes a loss of jobs in the United States. By comparison, only 58 percent of Democrats in Texas said the same.
As has been the case throughout much of the Democratic race, heavy turnout was reported in all four contests. Watch a report on what to look for in the March 4 primaries »
Despite freezing rain in northern Ohio and bad weather elsewhere in the state, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner estimated that as many as 52 percent of registered voters might go to the polls, 15 percent higher than the average of past presidential primaries.
Three polling stations in Jefferson County in eastern Ohio were relocated Tuesday because of flooding that could have prevented people from voting, election officials said.
source:http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/04/march.4.dems/
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