Primary breakdown: the Long Island factor

BY JENNIFER MALONEY | jennifer.maloney@newsday.com

February 6, 2008

Sen. Hillary Clinton won solid victories over Sen. Barack Obama on Long Island and across New York State last night in the state's presidential primary, and Sen. John McCain handily won the Republican contest.

With 99 percent of election districts counted, Clinton was beating Obama by 62 percent to 34 percent in Suffolk County. In Nassau, with 960 of 1,137 districts counted, Clinton was beating Obama by 52,556 to 30,053 votes, according to the board of elections. Statewide returns showed her with a margin of 57 percent to 40 percent.

"Hillary's win is significant - it's not a knockout blow," said Stanley Klein, a C.W. Post political science professor and Suffolk Republican committeeman. "Hillary should pat herself on the back and I think that Obama should say, 'Well, because of the rules, I didn't do too badly.'"

In the state's Republican primary, McCain scored more than half the votes, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney trailing at 28 percent, followed by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul.

In Nassau, McCain had 29,118 votes with 960 election districts reporting to Romney's 13,851.

Huckabee had 3,149 votes, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani got 1,644, despite having pulled out of the race.

Grant Lally, a Mineola attorney and vice chairman of McCain's state campaign said, "It's a great victory in New York for John McCain and this should help propel him on to victory for the Republican nomination and on to victory in November. Long Island gave him a hugely disproportionate victory margin."

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, who campaigned for Clinton, said: "No one could have expected Hillary to do 100 [percent], but based on the flood of advertising from Obama, I think her showing was extremely strong."

Jon Cooper, Obama's Long Island campaign chairman, said, "Certainly, the Clinton camp had the political establishment, the union establishment, but if you look at the grass roots, the presence of the Obama volunteers at supermarkets and at train stations every morning ... it was basically the difference between an air war and a ground war."

Of New York's 281 Democratic delegates, 232 were up for grabs yesterday in a primary contest that came weeks earlier than in past years - and thus put New Yorkers more in position to influence the nominations.

For the first time in more than five decades, there was no indisputable front-runner nationwide for either the Democratic or Republican parties.

New York delegates represent 14 percent of those required for a Democratic nomination and 8 percent of those required for a Republican nomination.

Long Island itself, with three more Democratic delegates than the entire state of New Hampshire, stood to make an impact.

In the state's Republican primary, all of the 101 delegates - including 15 from Long Island - were to be handed to the GOP primary winner. The Democratic primary, which awards delegates on a proportional basis, was expected to give delegates to both Clinton and Obama.

On Long Island and statewide yesterday, every vote counted in what amounted to a battle for delegates to the party nominating conventions this summer.

On Long Island, 25 Democratic delegates were at stake - five in each of five congressional districts.

In each district, a candidate had to win 15 percent to win one delegate, 30 percent to win two delegates and a minimum of 45 percent to win three.

If both candidates had more than 45 percent of the votes, the candidate with the most votes would receive three delegates and the other would receive two.

How NY voted

Unofficial results from last night's New York primaries as of 11 p.m. Percentages are rounded.