WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton marched across the country Tuesday, winning a string of key battleground states with a coalition of women, older voters and moderates, but Barack Obama nearly matched her with his own series of victories, including one in Utah.

Although Obama increasingly had drawn big, enthusiastic crowds across the nation, the New York senator showed impressive breadth in winning her home state and key battlegrounds in New Jersey, Missouri, Arizona and Massachusetts while rolling through Tennessee, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Obama, though, wouldn't fade, as the Illinois senator won states with large black voting blocs — Georgia, Alabama and Delaware — while taking primaries in his home state, Utah and Connecticut as well as caucuses in North Dakota, Kansas, Minnesota, Idaho and Colorado.

The results mean that the Clinton-Obama duel will continue for weeks and possibly months. Both campaigns stressed Tuesday night that they were ready to battle later this week in Louisiana and Nebraska, which hold contests Saturday, then on to Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia next Tuesday — and perhaps all the way to the August convention.

Obama told cheering supporters in Chicago, "The polls are just closing in California and the votes are still being counted in cities and towns across America, but there is one thing on this February night that we do not need the final results to know. Our time has come. Our movement is real and change is coming to America."

Clinton's triumph in Massachusetts was typical of her victories throughout the evening. Fifty-eight percent of the voters were women, according to exit polls, and they gave her a 17-point edge. She also beat Obama by 7 points among Latino voters, and did very well among moderates.

She held back from declaring victory Tuesday night when speaking to supporters in New York. Instead, she recited her campaign themes and said: "I look forward to continuing our campaign and our debate about how to leave this country better off for the next generation. That is the work of my life."

Obama countered Clinton's win in Massachusetts by taking neighboring Connecticut, where local political leaders tended to rally behind him and brought the state's large liberal community with them.

He also did well in states such as Georgia, where more than half the voting population was African-American and went for him by 8 to 1. He got 39 percent of whites. His appeal also followed another familiar pattern: He won the 18- to 29-year-old vote by 77 to 21 percent.