Early Results: N.Y. And Massachusetts For Clinton And Illinois And Georgia For Obama

Early returns suggest it’s going to be a long night and that when it’s over the Democratic race for the 2008 Presidential nomination will be far from over:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York took two of the big early prizes Super Tuesday in a coast-to-coast struggle for delegates in the grueling Democratic campaign, winning Massachusetts and her home state of New York, NBC News projected.

NBC News also projected Clinton to win in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Sen. Barack Obama got two big wins in his home state, Illinois and Georgia.

Georgia was Obama’s second straight Southern triumph, and, like an earlier victory in South Carolina, it was built on a wave of black votes. The 87 delegates at stake in Georgia’s primary were expected to be divided between Obama and Clinton in rough proportion to the votes.

African-Americans accounted for slightly more than half the ballots cast in Georgia, and he was gaining about 90 percent of them. Clinton won nearly 60 percent of the white votes, a reduced advantage compared to her showing in earlier states.

In Illinois, 153 delegates were at stake.

“It’s good to be home,” said Obama, who voted in Hyde Park, Ill. “It’s nice to know that I’ve got so much support back home.

NOTE: We’ll be posting returns as we see some races being called, but as a policy decision we’ll avoid doing a lot of posts calling states based simply on exit polls. There have been too many controversies swirling around the leaking of these partial results. Notably, that they have not often reflected the actual final results.