Obama gains ground; Huckabee takes Kansas

WASHINGTON — Sen. Barack Obama won caucuses in Nebraska and Washington state and moved ahead in the Louisiana primary Saturday night, slicing into Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's slender delegate lead in their historic race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Illinois senator was winning two-thirds support in both caucus states.

Returns from the first handful of Louisiana precincts showed him leading, a black man hoping to extend a string of Southern primary triumphs that already included South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia.

In all, the three states, plus caucuses in the Virgin Islands, offered 161 delegates.

Clinton began the day with a slender delegate lead in The Associated Press count. She had 1,055 delegates to 998 for Obama. A total of 2,025 is required to win the nomination at the national convention in Denver.

The Democratic race moved into a new, post-Super Tuesday phase as Sen. John McCain flunked his first ballot test since becoming the Republican nominee-in-waiting. He lost Kansas caucuses to Mike Huckabee, gaining less than 24 percent of the vote.

Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, got nearly 60 percent of the vote a few hours after telling conservatives in Washington, "I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them." He won all 36 delegates at stake.

McCain and Huckabee also were running even in early caucus returns from Washington state. McCain led in the Louisiana primary, but was below the absolute majority he needed to pocket the 20 delegates at stake.

For all his brave talk, Huckabee was hopelessly behind in the delegate race. McCain had 719, compared with 234 for Huckabee and 14 for Texas Rep. Ron Paul. It takes 1,191 to win the nomination at the national convention.

The Democrats' race was as close as the Republicans' was not, a contest between Obama, hoping to become the first black president, and Clinton, campaigning to become the first female commander in chief.

The two rivals contest primaries on Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, all states that Obama hoped to place in his column.

Preliminary results of a survey of voters leaving their polling places in Louisiana showed that nearly half of those casting ballots were black. As a group, African-Americans have overwhelmingly favored Obama in earlier primaries, helping him to wins in several Southern states.