NY: Clinton's Homework Pays Off

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to reporters as her husband, former president Bill Clinton, casts his vote in Chappaqua, N.Y.
(AP).

By Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post has called New York for Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), delivering the second-biggest delegate prize of the night to the party's front-runner in the national polls.

With New York's polls closed at 9 p.m., Clinton maintained her strong pre-election day lead over Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) across most demographic lines in the state that twice elected her to the U.S. Senate. Exit polls showed that Clinton held onto a greater share of African American voters in New York than elsewhere, while also carrying men and triggering a high turnout among women.

Democrats will award 232 of 281 New York delegates based on the proportion of the vote each candidate receives in the state's 29 congressional districts. Clinton has secured support from most of the rest, the superdelegates, which include herself, her husband -- former president Bill Clinton -- the state's governor and the 24 other Democratic members of Congress who have endorsed her.

Estimates of Democratic turnout were expected to rival or exceed the 1.6 million voters who cast ballots in 1988, when former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis defeated the Rev. Jesse Jackson.