Networks call West Virginia for Clinton

In an unsurprising result, Hillary Clinton has apparently won West Virginia's Democratic primary; the question now is her margin of victory, and how much it'll matter.

Published May 13, 2008 11:31PM (EDT)

Well, no surprise here -- as soon as polls closed in West Virginia, at 7:30 p.m. EDT, the networks declared Hillary Clinton the winner of the state's Democratic primary.

What remains to be seen is just how big her margin of victory will be. At the moment, it seems like it'll be quite large; that will largely end up being symbolic, however, as once she's past a certain point the count of delegates allocated to her won't move all that much, and Obama's superdelegate pickups over the past week will negate whatever Clinton nets tonight. Also worth waiting for is the impact of her victory, whether it will be dismissed or whether some of the exit polls on the racial divide and feelings about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright might make some in the party nervous about Obama's general election prospects.


By Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.

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