Clinton Wins Night's Biggest Prize

This story was written by CBSNews.com political reporter David Miller.

Clinton won the night's biggest prize with a victory in delegate-rich California. She also racked up victories in Massachusetts and six other states among the 22 holding Democratic contests on Super Tuesday, according to CBS News projections.

The former first lady is projected to win in Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, New Jersey, New York -- which she has represented in the Senate since 2001 -- and Arkansas, where her husband, former President Bill Clinton, once served as governor.

"I want to congratulate Sen. Obama on his victories tonight," she said. "I look forward to continuing our campaign and our debates about how to leave this country better off for the next generation, because that is the work of my life."

Obama is projected to win 13 states, including primaries in Georgia, Alabama, his home state of Illinois, and the Northeast states of Connecticut and Delaware -- both once viewed as Clinton strongholds. Late returns also gave him a victory in Missouri, a key Midwestern battleground.

He is also projected to win all of the night's caucuses, including those in Alaska, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, North Dakota, Minnesota and Kansas, where he had the endorsement of the state's popular female governor and family roots on his mother's side.

"Our time has come, our movement is real, and change is coming to America," Obama said to cheering supporters in Chicago. "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

Clinton's win in Massachusetts is significant, coming after Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and several other members of the Kennedy clan made very public endorsements of Obama and campaigned on this behalf. CBS News exit polling in the state indicates that Kennedy's endorsement was considered important, particularly among Hispanics, but wasn't enough to overcome Clinton's large advantage among women voters.

But Obama's win in Connecticut also carries weight, coming in Clinton's own backyard. CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod reported the campaign was playing down Obama's victory, though they said earlier in the night that the results there and in Massachusetts would serve as bellwethers.

CBS News correspondent Peter Maer reports that David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, put a positive spin on the night's mixed outcome, saying it defied predictions from earlier in the campaign that the day's voting would wrap up the nomination for Clinton.

"This was the night that Hillary Clinton announced she was going to close out our campaign and that's hardly happened," Axelrod said. "We're in a strong strong position coming out of this night."

He expected Obama and Clinton to be "roughly even" in the delegate count once the night's votes were tabulated, while also playing down the loss in Massachusetts.

"Massachusetts was Bill Clinton's number one state the last time he ran," he said. "It was a strong base for the Clinton's. We always knew it was an uphill climb."

CBS News estimates that Clinton has won 534 of the night's available delegates compared to Obama's 519. Since the campaign kicked off with the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Clinton has won 793 delegates and Obama 700. Party rules require a candidate to win 2,025 delegates to secure the nomination. Click here to see the delegate scorecard.

Clinton's victories were propelled not only by an edge among women voters, but also Hispanics. CBS News exit polling indicates she won more than 60 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide. Obama, meanwhile, was winning big among black and white men and held a commanding advantage among African Americans, particularly in Southern states.

The night's delegate split could be a prelude to a contest that goes all the way to the party's convention, CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer said, with a fight over whether and how to seat the delegations from Michigan and Florida, which violated party rules by holding primaries earlier than allowed.

"It may be all the way to the nominating convention before we know who is going to get the Democratic nomination," he said. "It may be one of these old fashioned, which delegation are you going to seat at the convention, and all that kind of business … all those thrilling stories of yesteryear."

According to nationwide early exit polling, nearly half of Democratic voters said the economy was their top priority, and more than 90 percent said they thought the economy was in bad shape.

Just over half, 51 percent, said the ability to bring change was the most important quality in a candidate, with 23 percent citing experience.

Yet those two qualities didn't end up driving Tuesday's results, Schieffer said.

"I think the interesting thing here is we were talking about this being an election about change or about experience, it's breaking down to be an election about gender and about race," he said. "I think this is not all about what we thought it was going to be about tonight."

The Obama campaign had been lowering expectations for days but was privately hoping for a big night, CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reported before the polls closed. Campaign manager David Plouffe has said he would consider the night a win if Obama finished within 100 delegates of Clinton.

Both have been running confident, diligent campaigns headed into Tuesday's voting - a reflection of the fact that neither Democrat is expected to come out of Super Tuesday with a significant edge over the other once the results are tallied. (For coverage of the Republican race, click here.)

In a conference call Tuesday with reporters, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson and senior strategist Mark Penn said that while they believe Clinton will emerge with more delegates overall than Obama, he may well win more delegates in Tuesday's contests.

They also acknowledged that Obama is well positioned to win several of the contests between now and March 4, when Ohio and Texas vote, the AP reported.

With so many states casting votes, Democrats spent unprecedented amounts of money on television advertising. Clinton and Obama each poured more than $1 million a day into TV ads in the last week alone.

Both Democrats have pursued broad, national strategies and are aiming to pick up delegates wherever possible - including each other's home turf. That's because Democratic Party rules require all states to award their delegates on a proportional basis, meaning a candidate could come in second in the vote but split delegates evenly with the other candidate. It's even possible to come in second and win the majority of delegates, as Obama did in Nevada's Jan. 19 caucuses.

A split on Super Tuesday could benefit Obama, who has been gaining ground since his resounding victory in South Carolina's Jan. 26 primary but is still seen as a slight underdog in the race against Clinton, who, along with former President Bill Clinton, has dominated Democratic politics since the early 1990s.

If Obama stays close in the delegate count - and especially if he passes Clinton - it could give him a boost headed into a series of contests that, in terms of demographics, appear to favor him. They include the Feb. 12 "Chesapeake primaries" in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia and Feb. 19 caucuses in Hawaii, where he spent much of his youth.