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Media Credit: Edyta Blaszczyk Frank Tebow, an election judge from Carbondale, explains how to fill out the voting ballot to Daniel Muehl-Miller, a senior from Charlston studying physics, during the primary elections Tuesday. Unlike the general election in November, voters must choose between the Green, Republican and Democratic party for the primary election.

Updated with results as of 10:20 a.m.

Both Democrats vying for the presidential nomination have Illinois backgrounds, but voters in the state decided Barack Obama would make a better president.

Yet the return from Tuesday's general primary election, which sent voters in 24 states to the polls, will not show a clear Democratic winner just yet, according to Mike Lawrence, a past adviser to former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar and director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. Less than half of the required delegates have been given to candidates.

Obama defeated Sen. Hillary Clinton, who grew up in the western Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, during the Illinois primary and will win the majority of Illinois' delegates. On the opposite ballot, Illinois' Republican voters joined the masses across the country that voted for Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

As the final voting precincts were counted Wednesday morning, McCain kept a lead of nearly 300 delegates on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and even more against former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has earned 169 delegates for the Republican National Convention.

Nationally, Clinton was the star of the night as she won key victories in New York, New Jersey and California, which offered candidates the most delegates. At 10:20 a.m. Wednesday, Clinton had a 74 delegate jump on Obama, which is a lead that has been decreasing as counting progresses.

Obama or Clinton must obtain 2,025 delegates by the end of the primaries in order to be named the Democratic Party's nominee, while Republicans require their candidates to earn 1,191 delegates. Primaries will continue until the first week of June.

With 97 percent of Illinois' precincts reporting, Obama showed a dominant lead on Clinton in his home-state by taking 65 percent of the vote. The state is worth a total of 185 delegates, who would represent a candidate at the Democratic Nation Convention in August.

"I would like to see the count after tonight," Lawrence said. Obama has secured 82 Illinois delegates while Clinton claimed 31.

Obama's victory in Illinois was no surprise to many, including John Jackson, a visiting political professor from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, who predicted the win several months before Tuesday's election. Jackson said Obama would win Illinois Democrats by a landslide while the Republican race would be a tossup.

Just before midnight, Jackson County Clerk Larry Reinhart and his staff had released the results from all 61 county precincts. The results in Jackson County followed the same trends as Illinois. Locally, Obama defeated Clinton by more than 2,200 votes, or 62 percent of the vote.

The Republican results were more split in Jackson County. McCain won the race with 35 percent of the vote with Romney finishing in second by scoring 28 percent. Huckabee and Romney were separated by nearly half percent of the vote.

After visiting Carbondale in December, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney had claimed 77 percent of the county vote. McKinney, a former Democratic U.S. Congresswoman from Georgia, was listed on the first Green Party ballot in Illinois.

Aside from a brief, early morning power outage at Carbondale's Super Block, where polling places were setup, and a two hour delay in counting ballots from three precincts, Reinhardt said Tuesday's primary went according to plan.

Obama caught the nation's eye after a speech given to delegates at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and following the publishing of two best-selling books. Claiming to be hesitant of running at first, Obama announced his presidential bid on the steps of the old state capitol in Springfield - the same building a young Abraham Lincoln began his political career that would end with the presidency.

Former Carbondale City Councilwoman Sheila Simon, who made six trips to Iowa before the state's caucus in January to campaign for Obama, said younger voters have even gotten politically involved because of the senator from Chicago's campaign.

Clinton left Illinois in 1965 for Wellesley College, and married Bill Clinton in 1975. Three years later, the Clinton family would be the first family of Arkansas and later moved to Washington D.C. in 1992 when her husband was elected to the presidency.

She has been a resident of New York state since the start of her life outside the White House.

Barton Lorimor can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 274 or barton.lorimor@siude.com.

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