Clinton camp gains momentum

Washington: Hillary Clinton on Wednesday hoped her decisive victory over Democratic rival Barack Obama in Pennsylvania will show she has the broad support to win the US presidential election in November.

But Obama emerged from the latest, and most acrimonious, bout in the state-by-state contest still holding a narrow lead in popular votes and in delegates who select the party's nominee at its August convention.

Clinton told cheering supporters in Philadelphia after Tuesday's vote: "Some people counted me out and said to drop out, but the American people don't quit and they deserve a president who doesn't quit either."

She was joined on stage by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter Chelsea.

After unusually heavy turnout, she won with 55 per cent of the state vote to Obama's 45 per cent. The win paid immediate dividends for the cash-strapped New York senator, who said she took in $3 million (Dh11 million) in the following hours.

Both candidates immediately looked to the next round of contests on May 6 in North Carolina, where Obama is favoured, and Indiana, which is considered a toss-up.

Clinton survived a heavy advertising onslaught in Pennsylvania by Obama, who outspent her by more than 2-to-1. In television interviews yesterday, Clinton said exit polls showed she had drawn support from the key groups needed to win in November and brushed off suggestions that she was running a negative campaign. "If you look at the votes that I have received, and the coalition I've put together, it is a much stronger base on which to build an electoral victory" against Republican John McCain, she said in an interview with NBC's Today show.

She dismissed an editorial in The New York Times which called on her to acknowledge that "the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election".

"That's part of campaigns, and you know it goes back and forth. That's the way campaigns are," she said, adding it was one of the more positive elections she had seen.

Obama, who narrowed a 20-point Clinton lead in opinion polls before falling short, said: "There were a lot of folks who didn't think we could make this a close race when it started." "Six weeks later, we closed the gap. We rallied people of every age and race and background to our cause."