Clinton Dismisses Race Factor in West Virginia Primary

May 14, 2008 — -- A day after her landslide primary victory in West Virginia, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., dismissed exit poll results that suggest some of her supporters are voting against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., because he's black.

"Race and gender are facts — the first African-American, the first woman — but I believe that the vast majority of voters [in West Virginia], an overwhelming majority, chose between us based on who can be better on the economy and health care and college affordability," Clinton said in an interview with ABC's World News anchor Charlie Gibson.

Watch more of the interview with Sen. Hillary Clinton tonight on "World News" at 6:30 p.m. ET.

Clinton's continuing support from white, lower-income, low-education and older voters has fueled her argument that Obama is a flawed general election candidate against Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican nominee.

In what could be a problem for the man vying to be the nation's first black president, more than half of the overwhelmingly white, Southern Democrats polled after they voted Tuesday in West Virginia said they wouldn't support Obama if he was the nominee this fall.

More disturbing, racially motivated voting appeared to be running higher than usual according to exit poll results. Two in 10 white voters in West Virginia said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote. Of those voters, about 70 percent said they wouldn't support Obama over McCain.

In her "World News" interview with Charlie Gibson, Clinton asserted that just as many people may be discriminating against her because she is a woman.

"There are people, as your polls just recited, who have reluctance about a woman, who have reluctance about an African-American but thankfully those are a relatively small majority," she told Gibson, "and I'm not sure that those people would ever vote for one of us."

Clinton said she intends to stay in the race and compete until the last primaries on June 4 in South Dakota and Montana, where former President Bill Clinton has been campaigning on her behalf.