Democrats in close fight, McCain aiming for a knockout blow Vs Romney
WASHINGTON - The biggest day ever in US presidential nominating contests began on Tuesday, with Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a close fight and Republican John McCain aiming for a knockout blow against Mitt Romney.
Twenty-four of the 50 states hold nominating contests for one or both parties on "Super Tuesday" for a huge haul of delegates to this summer's nominating conventions to choose the candidates for the November presidential election.
Clinton, a New York senator, tried to hold off a late surge by Obama, an Illinois senator who has cut into her once commanding leads in opinion polls nationally and in some states in the coast-to-coast voting.
"The fact that we've made so much progress I think indicates that we've got the right message, and the question is are we going to be able to pull some states out," Obama said on NBC's "Today Show."
"No matter what happens though, we're probably going to see a split decision tonight," Obama said.
More than half of the total Democratic delegates and about 40 percent of the Republican delegates are up for grabs on Tuesday. Georgia is the first state to end voting at 7 p.m. EST (2400 GMT), although West Virginia Republicans will make their choices at a convention earlier in the day.
Opinion polls show a tight Democratic race in many states, but a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll showed Obama opening a 13-point lead on Clinton in California, which alone has 441 delegates to the nominating convention -- more than one-fifth of the total needed to win. California polls close at 11 p.m. EST (0400 GMT).
Among Republicans, McCain had solid leads in most of the big battleground states. But McCain, an Arizona senator, and Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, changed their plans so they could make late dashes to California, where opinion polls showed a tighter contest.
"We wanted to come back and put an exclamation point on the kind of support I'm getting here," Romney told reporters in California late on Monday night.
A new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll showed Romney up by 7 points in California, although McCain held commanding double-digit advantages in New York and New Jersey.
Clinton and Obama, who had split the first four significant contests, used Monday to hunt for support in delegate-rich Northeast states. Both campaigns spent heavily on final advertising sprees from coast to coast.
Clinton voted in suburban New York, accompanied by her husband former President Bill Clinton, after appearing on several morning television shows.
"None of us really understands what the impact of all these contests on one day will be for for any of us," she said on ABC's Good Morning America.
With Clinton and Obama running close, aides tried to lower expectations and predicted a lengthy battle extending to Ohio and Texas in March and Pennsylvania in April.
Because Democrats distribute delegates in proportion to their vote statewide and in individual congressional districts, candidates can come away with large numbers of delegates even in states they lose.
A LONG CONTEST
"The nominating rules of our party are really designed to prolong a contest between two strong candidates," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe cited Clinton's once commanding leads in many of the 22 states holding Democratic contests. The Obama campaign's goal is to win a few states and stay within 100 delegates on Tuesday, he said in a memo to reporters.
In contrast, many of the 21 Republican contests are winner-take-all when awarding delegates, meaning a strong day by McCain could give him a commanding lead.
McCain predicted victory at an early-morning rally.
"We're going to win today, we're going to win the nomination and we're going to win the presidency," McCain told a crowd of several hundred in New York's Rockefeller Center following his appearance on NBC's morning show.
In dueling commercials, McCain and Romney both invoked former President Ronald Reagan in an attempt to question each others' conservative credentials.
Romney has tried to take advantage of conservative qualms about McCain's views on taxes, immigration and campaign finance reform, while supporters on talk radio and in the Senate have questioned his temperament.
McCain said his prickly reputation comes from fighting corruption and wasteful spending.
"I've never been elected Miss Congeniality because I've fought against these practices that have caused the American people to hold us in such low esteem," he said on the "Today Show".
"In all due respect, a couple of those people that are criticizing me are not the most respected members of the United States Senate," he said.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the first contest in Iowa, also remains in the Republican race, and has siphoned conservative votes from Romney in some contests. He is aiming for a strong showing in the South.
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