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.

The Race Factor

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 Fighting on Though Last Primaries

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.

"We're going on to Kentucky and Oregon and the rest of the contests and then we'll see what happens with Michigan and Florida and by June 4th we'll have a clearer idea about where everyone stands," Clinton said in the interview with ABC News.

In addition to arguing that she has a broader coalition of support than Obama, Clinton said the primary and caucus states she has won would generate 298 electoral votes to Obama's 217 electoral votes in a fall campaign.

"People who are serious about us winning in the fall have to start looking at the electoral map and figure out how we're going to have a candidate who actually gets to the 270 electoral vote majority," she said.

While the former first lady continues to trail Obama in pledged delegates and superdelegates, her win in West Virginia Tuesday boosted her popular vote total.

Clinton now leads Obama in the popular vote by over 43,000 votes if vote totals in Michigan and Florida are included.

The Democratic Party has scheduled a meeting on May 31 to discuss how to resolve Michigan and Florida, two states that were stripped of their delegates by the party as punishment for moving their primaries up on the calendar.

Clinton won both states, though the candidates abided by their promises not to campaign in the states and Obama's name didn't appear on the Michigan ballot.

While Obama has agreed that some of the delegates should be seated, the New York senator said she and Obama are not in negotiations about how to resolve the issue.

Clinton repeated her assertion that she or Obama must reach 2,210 delegates to win the nomination — a number that included the delegates in Michigan and Florida.

At present, the official number of delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination is 2,025.

"We can't be sending a nominee to our convention based on only 48 states, that would be a grave error," she said, "And particularly these two states that are so important to our electoral chances in the fall."

Eager to woo some of those key voters and demonstrate he has begun his general election strategy, Obama campaigned Wednesday at a Chrysler plant in Macomb County, Michigan — home to the working-class voters in swing states that will be crucial for Obama to win in the general election.

Obama also picked up the support of NARAL Pro-Choice America, a leading abortion rights advocacy organization that has supported Clinton throughout her political career.

Clinton Woos Fundraisers

Clinton meets Wednesday with a group of about 40 fundraisers from around the country at a hotel in Washington, D.C.

She is also throwing a party for top donors at her Washington home.

According to one attendee, her afternoon meeting was set up last week to enable fundraisers to regroup and ask Clinton questions after the West Virginia primary.

Spokesman Howard Wolfson insisted that the meeting is a regular quarterly check-in session, not an emergency session.

"The meeting is, as it always is, to give them a sense of where the race is, to thank them for their past support, and to urge their continued generosity," Wolfson told ABC News' Kate Snow.

Her campaign debt is estimated to exceed $20 million and could go deeper as she campaigns through the final primaries June 3.

ABC News' Kate Snow contributed to this report.