(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-12 08:27

JACKSON, Miss. - Barack Obama seized the lead in the Mississippi primary Tuesday, latest in a string of racially polarized contests across the Deep South in the Democratic presidential campaign and a final tune-up before next month's high-stakes race with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania.

Democratic president hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., makes remarks during a campaign stop at a Gamesa plant, Tuesday, March 11, 2008, in Fairless Hills, Pa. Barack Obama seized the lead in the Mississippi primary Tuesday. [Agencies]

Obama was winning roughly 90 percent of the black vote but only about one-third of the white vote, extending a pattern that carried him to victory in earlier primaries in South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.

Obama was leading in the overall Mississippi vote, according to an Associated Press analysis of surveys of voters as they left the polls.

Mississippi had 33 national convention delegates at stake, and Obama hoped for a win sizable enough to erase most if not all of Clinton's 11-delegate gain from last week, when she won three primaries.

Obama began the night with 1,579 delegates, to 1,473 for Clinton. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination.

Neither of the two rivals appears able to win enough delegates through primaries and caucuses to prevail in their historic race for the nomination, a development that has elevated the importance of nearly 800 elected officials and party leaders who will attend next summer's national convention as unelected superdelegates.

Obama leads Clinton among pledged delegates, 1,368-1,226 in The Associated Press count, while the former first lady has an advantage among superdelegates, 247-211.

There was little suspense about the Mississippi outcome, and both Clinton and Obama spent part of their day campaigning in Pennsylvania, which has 158 delegates at stake in a primary on April 22.

The volatile issue of race has been a constant presence in the historic Democratic campaign, and it resurfaced during the day in the form of comments by Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate and a Clinton supporter.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," she said in an interview with the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., that was published last Friday.

Clinton expressed disagreement with Ferraro's comments, and said, "It's regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal."

Obama called Ferraro's remarks "patently absurd."

Blacks, who have supported Obama in overwhelming numbers in earlier primaries, accounted for roughly half the ballots cast in Mississippi, according to interviews with voters leaving polling places.

Nearly one in five Democratic primary voters called himself an independent. About one in 10 was Republican.

Six in 10 Obama supporters said he should pick the former first lady as his vice presidential running mate if he wins the presidential nomination. A smaller share of Clinton's voters, four in 10, said she should place him on the ticket.

The Republican primary provided even less suspense than the Democratic contest. Sen. John McCain or Arizona had already amassed enough delegates to win his party's nomination and was in New York, attending an evening fundraiser that was expected to raise $1 million.

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