Analysis: Long slog ahead for Democrats

By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff

PHILADELPHIA -- Barack Obama didn't get the most votes. He didn't deliver a knockout punch. And he didn't make many inroads into such crucial constituencies as white women and Catholics.

Hillary Clinton got the most votes, but based on the early returns may not have gotten enough to seriously dent Obama's lead in the elected delegates or the popular vote.

The Pennsylvania primary -- one of the tensest and hardest-fought political duels in history -- ended with a seemingly unspectacular result: Clinton doing about what she'd been expected to do -- win solidly, but not overwhelmingly -- and Obama performing decently enough.

The winner was Clinton, giving her the chance to fight on, but the clear losers were those who were hoping for a definitive result from this primary season.

"While [Clinton] clearly won, the difference in delegate count and vote count may not end up being all that compelling," said Dartmouth College political scientist Linda Fowler, noting that the Democratic Party's system of allocating delegates by percentage of the vote won in each congressional district favors Obama, who ran up huge margins in predominantly black districts.

"Clinton did well despite being outspent by Obama, but the fact is that this state was made-to-order for her demographically," Fowler added.

Indeed, Pennsylvania is the third-oldest state, and Clinton has done better with older voters than younger ones. It also has a large white working class, including many Catholics, and Clinton has dominated those groups as well.

Coming into Pennsylvania, Clinton's campaign had two goals: Winning enough of a victory to help close the gap in the popular vote nationally, and raising doubts about Obama's ability to win big industrial states.

Going into the primary, Obama led the national popular vote by roughly 700,000, not counting Florida and Michigan, whose primaries were shunned by the Democratic National Committee for jumping ahead of the prescribed schedule.

Obama took his name off the ballot in Michigan, so Clinton's victory there didn't say much about the relative strength of the two of them. But both names were on the Florida ballot, and Clinton won by almost 300,000 votes. If Florida were included in the tally, Obama's lead going into Pennsylvania was little more than 400,000.

If Clinton's margin of victory stayed where it was when the networks called the election for her -- about 8 percentage points -- she'd end up carving at most 180,000 votes off Obama's lead, drawing her closer but perhaps not close enough. Obama leads in the polls in the next-largest state yet to vote, North Carolina.

The popular vote is crucial to Clinton because Obama, who has scored better in low-voting caucuses in small states, is unlikely to lose his lead in elected delegates. Thus, when both candidates woo the roughly 300 undecided superdelegates -- the party leaders who will provide the decisive margin -- Obama will claim that he has won the most delegates and therefore should be crowned the nominee. Clinton's only chance to undercut him is to point out that she actually won more votes.

"This looks like the Democratic party leaders' worst dream -- a Clinton margin not large enough to put her in a strong position to carry on and an Obama vote not large enough to end things," said University of Pennsylvania political scientist Donald F. Kettl, in an emailed response. ``This is going to continue on, and put the party into the tough job of finding the endgame."

Indeed, Clinton may not have succeeded in her second goal of raising enough doubts about Obama to transform the race -- but some doubts remain. Obama's comment about the bitterness of working-class voters, made two weeks ago, may have or may not have affected the result -- but they put the spotlight on his weakness among that voting group.

Tonight's results didn't reassure anyone that Obama can win that crucial voting bloc against Republican John McCain.

The next primaries, two weeks from now in North Carolina and Indiana, will now assume the same importance as Pennsylvania -- a chance for Obama to address his weaknesses and Clinton to show greater strength.

Both Democratic candidates still have a lot of work ahead.