Clinton, McCain Take NJ As Super Tuesday Sweeps Nation
This story was written by Pablo Albilal, Daily Targum
After the smoke cleared on Super Tuesday, with several precincts still staggering in across the nation, two names stood out from among the rest -- Clinton and McCain. The two front-runners, despite some setbacks, held their commanding leads over their respective parties on a day where 24 states placed their allegiance.
Most New Jersey voters pledged their allegiance to Hillary Clinton, who won more than half of the vote for the Garden State. According to CNN's Exit Poll data, this may be attributed to the high turnout of women voters who made up 58 percent of voters. Women preferred Clinton to fellow Democrat Barack Obama, with a ringing endorsement of 58 percent of the vote to Obama's 39 percent.
Young voters in New Jersey comprised 13 percent of Democratic voters and 8 percent of Republican voters in the state, and 18- to 29-year-olds mainly voted for Obama on the Democratic ticket and Sen. John McCain on the Republican side.
Mike Blackwell, an inspector for the Middlesex County Board of Elections, overlooked the voting process in the musty Lincoln Elementary School gym, the polling place closest for Rutgers University students living on College Avenue.
"We have had a huge turnout today. There has been a better student turnout every presidential election in our district which represents people including those living within the River Dorms, and those on College Avenue," Blackwell said. "Since about 10:30 a.m., the students have been coming in, and we are open 'til 8 p.m. tonight so they can come in after their classes."
Rutgers College junior Samantha Mendenhall stood exactly 100 feet from the Lincoln Elementary School, as required by law. She handed out yellow "voters rights" cards as a way of making sure young voters' votes get counted. She recalled that there was a large police presence at polling locations that may deter people from voting if they are afraid of police.
"We are doing this at polling locations to make sure people are able to vote especially in Middlesex County," she said. "They give students a paper or provisional ballot which young voters are inexperienced with -- only three-fourths of which wind up being counted ... [American Civil Liberties Union] members have not been harassed this time, and people are not being forced to fill out provisional ballots. So far at this location, everything has been fine."
Nationally, the senators from New York and Arizona won big.
Sen. Barack Obama seemed to be favored in the southern states, while Sen. Hillary Clinton did well in the northeast, though there are exceptions to every rule.
McCain unequivocally won the most delegates, almost tripling the amount of his supposedly biggest rival, Mitt Romney. Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul rounded out the rest of the Republican ticket, Huckabee winning the so-called "Bible-Belt" states of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia and the state of his previous governorship, Arkansas.
Clinton won the most delegates on the Democratic front, getting about 70 more delegates than Obama.
Undoubtedly the biggest win for the two front-runners was their successes in the crucial California primary, the results of which were announced late in the evening.
Obama built a strong lead over his rival in the southern states where the black vote seemed to place him well over the margin of victory, while Clinton did very well among northeasterners, women and elderly voters.
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