Clinton’s Pennsylvania victory doesn’t do much for her odds

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s victory in the Pennsylvania primary today spared her once again from a forced exit from the Democratic presidential race, but she still faces long odds in her bid to defeat Sen. Barack Obama.

Much will depend on Clinton’s actual victory margin, which won’t be known until Wednesday. A double-digit win would ensure the race moves on to the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, and perhaps beyond.

A narrow win – say 6 percentage points or less – would put new pressure on Clinton to drop out of the race, even if she escaped the death blow that a Pennsylvania loss would certainly have inflicted.

What’s still clear, however, is that neither Democrat can win the 2,024 delegates needed to capture the party nomination in the nine contests that lie ahead over the next six weeks. It will be up to a few hundred superdelegates – elected officials and party leaders – to settle the nominating battle.

And even with the Pennsylvania win, Clinton still trails by nearly every measure: the popular vote, the number of states won, the delegates captured so far in primaries and caucuses. Obama also has narrowed Clinton’s once-formidable lead in superdelegates to barely over two dozen.

Clinton faces “an uphill climb,” said political scientist Quin Monson of Brigham Young University, because she must urge superdelegates to support her even though Obama remains ahead by those key measures.

“The best money is still that this just forestalls her exit from the race and draws out the nomination fight longer,” Monson said.

Clinton plans to campaign Wednesday in Indianapolis, then later in the week in Gary, Fort Wayne and other Indiana cities. Obama got a jump-start on the Indiana campaign, starting with a rally tonight in Evansville.

More delegates are at stake in the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina – a combined 187 – than the 158 awarded today in Pennsylvania.

If the six-week fight in Pennsylvania is any measure, rancor between Clinton and Obama could intensify in Indiana and North Carolina, raising new questions about whether the marathon struggle could harm the party’s drive to defeat Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

“It’s bitter, it’s divisive,” said G. Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “They’re name-calling, and it’s not the surrogates, it’s the candidates doing that.”

michael.finnegan@latimes.com