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Hillary Clinton cheers with hotel workers during a campaign stop at the Mandalay Bay Hotel on caucus day in Las Vegas Saturday. (AP Photo)

Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney took home wins in the Nevada caucuses Saturday, both racking up a greater number of votes than their opponents combined.

With 98 percent of Democratic precincts reporting, Clinton had 51 percent and Obama had 45 percent. John Edwards had 4 percent.

On the Republican side, with 100 percent of caucus sites reporting, Romney had 51 percent followed by Ron Paul, who made his strongest showing yet with 14 percent. John McCain took in 13 percent, Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson took in 8 percent, Rudy Giuliani took in 4 percent and Duncan Hunter took in 2 percent.

It was not immediately clear what impact the Nevada win would have on Romney’s campaign. Interest was low among the GOP candidates, but Romney made a last-minute push in the state, and in a race with no clear front-runner he’s defended his against-the-grain strategy, saying he could stomach a loss in South Carolina, which voted on the same day. He came in fourth in the first-in-the-South primary.

Romney cast his campaign as a quest for convention delegates, a race that he is currently winning and which relied in part on grabbing a good portion of Nevada’s delegates. He took 17 of the 31 available delegates there, The Associated Press projected.

The former Massachusetts governor was one of the few Republicans with any campaign presence in the state. Paul also aired television ads in Nevada. Romney heard about his victory while on a plane to Florida. 

“I’m not looking just to get a couple high-profile victories; I want to get delegates and I want to win this nomination,” he said.

Democrats focused on Nevada much more heavily.

FOX News exit polls showed Clinton won with big leads among female, senior, Hispanic voters and union members in the state. Polls showed 52 percent of women, 61 percent of seniors and 64 percent of Hispanics voted for the New York senator, whose victory in New Hampshire was achieved on the backs of some of the same voting groups.

“We had a great campaign here,” Clinton said after winning Nevada. “And I am particularly gratified that the people of Nevada have given us such a positive send-off. This is one step on a long journey throughout the country …”

Clinton captured the popular vote overall, but Obama appeared to edge her out for national convention delegates at stake, taking 13 to her 12. The state’s Democratic Party released a statement later saying those delegate counts could change as national convention delegates have not yet been directly awarded.

“Just like in Iowa what was awarded today were delegates to the County Convention. No national convention delegates were awarded. The calculations of national convention delegates being circulated are based upon an assumption that delegate preferences will remain the same between now and April 2008. We look forward to our county and state conventions where we will choose the delegates for the nominee that Nevadans support,” said party chairwoman Jill Derby.

Obama won the lead-off Iowa caucuses Jan. 3, and Clinton followed that with a victory on Jan. 8 in New Hampshire. The Democratic candidates next face off in South Carolina, where polls show Obama has an edge ahead of the state’s Jan. 26 primary.

Seeing a tight race, the Democratic Nevada campaign had heated up in recent days. Accusations of dirty tricks flew on all sides, and Obama’s rivals stepped up criticism of him for questionable tactics allegedly being carried out by his union supporters.

Bill Clinton repeated charges Saturday that Obama’s supporters — which include the powerful Culinary Workers Union — were using voter intimidation to rack up pledges for the Illinois senator.

Clinton told FOX News that eight caucus-goers he knows of on The Strip were told they could only register for Obama. He said only when he intervened were they allowed to caucus for Hillary Clinton.

“I think all the votes should count the same,” the former president said, decrying the caucus rules that were in place Saturday.

A recent federal court decision permitted nine at-large caucus sites for hotel and casino workers on the Las Vegas Strip — immediately following the decision a union supporting Obama began running a Spanish-language radio ad blasting Clinton’s supporters for backing the lawsuit that tried to block the caucus sites. The Clinton campaign hammered Obama for not denouncing the radio ads. Edwards did the same.

The Clinton campaign issued a lengthy statement Saturday afternoon saying it “won a huge victory by overcoming institutional hurdles and one of the worst negative ads in recent memory … our campaign also received numerous reports of strong-arm tactics designed to discourage our voters from caucusing.”

The Obama campaign circulated a memo ahead of the Nevada returns saying a win there would be a “significant upset,” and claiming the allegations of voter suppression were “outrageous.”

“The conduct of the Clinton campaign in recent weeks essentially makes the case for why we need Barack Obama — it’s the same old-style say anything or do anything to win, divisive attacks that have prevented progress in this country for so long,” the memo said.

Obama’s camp also said its backers were receiving telephone calls that made repeated reference to “Barack Hussein Obama.” And the campaign claimed more than 200 separate incidents of “trouble” at caucus sites, where allegedly doors were closed up to 30 minutes early and registration forms ran out so that people were turned away. More than 114,000 voters were estimated to have caucused to choose the roughly 10,000 delegates to the state convention.

Having finished a distant third, Edwards pledged to stay in the race.

“This is one of those times that I hope the old saying ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ turns out to be true. We’ll find out,” he said in Greenville, S.C. “”I am not finished with this fight. I am dead in it.”

Republican caucus-goers were much fewer, with roughly 35,000 voters meeting. Many of the voters said they were most concerned about the economy. Much as he did in Michigan, which he also won, Romney campaigned on the economy in Nevada. A day after President Bush called for a stimulus package worth up to $150 billion, Romney issued a plan of his own calling for $230 billion in tax cuts — it included a reduction in the lowest income tax bracket, tax cuts for working seniors and tax-free savings for the middle class.

The campaign released a statement Saturday claiming the Nevada win helps solidify his status as a change candidate.

“Today, the people of Nevada voted for change in Washington. For far too long, our leaders have promised to take the action necessary to build a stronger America, and still the people of Nevada and all across this country are waiting. Whether it is reforming health care, making America energy independent or securing the border, the American people have been promised much and are now ready for change,” he said.

Though earlier polls showed Romney had only a moderate lead going into Nevada, exit polls showed Mormons also contributed to Romney’s landslide.

Romney is a Mormon, and about one-quarter of Nevada voters share his faith. Exit polls showed nearly all Mormons voted for Romney in Saturday’s caucuses.

Campaigning in Columbia, S.C., Thompson teased Romney when he heard the news of his Nevada victory.

“Imagine that! Glad he could pull one out,” Thompson said.

FOX News’ Steve Brown, Aaron Bruns and Shushannah Walshe and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Nevada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.