Hillary Clinton Wins West Virginia Primary

According to the Associated Press Hillary Clinton has won the West Virginia Democratic Primary over Barack Obama. A convincing victory "with votes from 42 percent of West Virginia's precincts counted, Clinton was winning 65 percent of the vote, to 28 percent for Obama." They are able to call her the winner since "Clinton won at least 15 of the 28 delegates at stake in West Virginia, with 13 more to be allocated." The question now for the Hillary Clinton Campaign is the West Virginia victory enough to get her back in the race or is it too late?

Hillary Clinton wanted the victory in West Virginia more than Barack Obama. According to the AP "Obama was in the state on Monday, but it was clear he was looking beyond the primary." Clinton spent more time in the state. Her husband Bill Clinton spoke at Concord University in rural southern West Virginia and in Charleston. Hillary Clinton made several campaign stops in West Virginia. While Obama "said several days ago he expected Clinton to win by significant margins in West Virginia and then in Kentucky, which holds its primary next week." Barack leads "with 1,875.5 delegates, to 1,712 for Clinton, out of 2,025 needed to clinch the nomination at the party convention in Denver this summer."

The nomination is not in hand. However Obama does have a commanding lead. It may have helped Barack's chances to make a few more stops in the Mountain stop after all he was in Washington today only 65 miles from West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. Hillary was quoted as stating the importance of West Virginia is "no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without winning West Virginia."

The victory could be a significant since voter turn out should have been higher in the West Virginia proinary than some of the other primaries because West Virginia was also holding elections for local and state offices. The local campaigning could have lured more voters to the polls. The West Virginia Democratic Primary was also open to independent voters.