Taylor says he is most pleased by the number of Utahns who voted in the Utah primary, one of 24 Democratic contests across the states this "Super Tuesday."

Before polls closed and actual ballot counting started, Taylor said perhaps as many as 100,000 Utahns could vote in the Democratic Party — three times the turnout in the previous presidential primaries here in 1992, 2000 and 2004. But it looked like as many as 130,000 Utahns could have voted Tuesday.

"That is just great, really great," said Taylor.

"This is very exciting for us," he added. Democrats have been the minority party in Utah for more than 30 years, with twice as many Utahns identifying with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.

Utah Democrats have six super delegates — party leaders and Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah. And Taylor said those six super delegates can support anyone they chose, but are most are likely to support Obama after Tuesday's results.

So Obama can count on most of those six on the first round of convention voting.

On the Republican side, perhaps showing their libertarian side, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, actually out-polled Huckabee in Utah, even though both men were in single digits as a percent of the overall GOP vote, as was McCain.

About 35 Obama supporters at the Skybox Bar and Grille at The Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City cheered when NBC called the Utah Democratic race for Obama soon after 8 p.m.

As the Obama party gathered steam and more backers arrived in front of the vast TV screens, the whooping was even louder when the network called Kansas for their man.

Obama supporter Megan Riffe, Salt Lake City, shouted: "Go Obama!"

Riffe said she's delighted by the numbers of the Democratic turnout. "We're just really excited about how many people turned out to vote for Hillary and Obama."

Only about eight people showed up to a Clinton campaign party, a small and rather quite group. As Donald Dunn, a former Utah Democratic Party chairman and head of Clinton's Utah campaign, fiddled with a broken computer, he said that the Utah Democratic vote went about as expected, a close contest that will split the Democratic delegate vote between Obama and Clinton.

Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson, a long-time Clinton supporter, said the real winner in Utah are Democrats as a whole.

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Contributing: Joe Bauman and Arthur Raymond

E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com