As West Virginia votes, Obama heads elsewhere

Party officials predicted high turnout for West Virginia's Democratic primary on Tuesday despite the widespread belief that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would score an easy victory.

Tom Vogel, the executive director of the West Virginia Democratic Party, said on Tuesday that early voting was twice as heavy as in previous elections. More than 45,000 people cast their ballots early.

"So that's a very positive sign," Vogel said, adding that good weather across the state should also help generate a high turnout. "It's a little cool, but we've got sunshine and no bad weather. We expect a very good turnout."

Polls opened at 6:30 a.m. at the state's 1,965 precincts, and are to remain open until 7:30 p.m.

Jason Williams, the manager of the elections division at the West Virginia Secretary of State's office, said the turnout in the 2004 primary election was 39 percent of registered voters. This year, he expects turnout to reach between 50 and 60 percent.

"So far, most of the county clerks are reporting an average turnout for the primary, but we anticipate a surge early in the day as people are coming home from work," he said. "And with early voting so high, we do anticipate that to translate into higher turnout throughout the day."

Senator Barack Obama, expecting a shellacking on Tuesday, is ramping up his effort to behave like a general election candidate with a visit to Cape Girardeau, in the potential swing state of Missouri, for a town hall meeting later in the day.

Cape Girardeau is where the radio host Rush Limbaugh was born and started his on-air career, and it went overwhelmingly for George W. Bush in 2004. But it is the sort of place where the Democrats want to try to compete this year, and where Obama's campaign believes it can pick up some disaffected Republicans and independents.

"We think there are voters there who are desperately interested in changing Washington, they have an independent streak in them and we have a chance to pick up some votes," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama.

The Republican Party, which has been increasingly treating Obama as the presumptive Democratic nominee, engaged in an exercise of what political professionals call "bracketing" — the dispatching of local officials before and after an opponent's visit. In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published on Tuesday — and blasted out by the RNC — former Senator John C. Danforth of Missouri offered a multi-pronged critique of Obama, saying, for instance, that his plan for Iraq would send a message that "Americans can get pushed around by terrorists."

In a conference call with reporters, local Republican leaders continued the offensive.

"He will not resonate with Missourians, he's a tax-raising liberal," said Doug Russell, the chairman of the state Republican Party.

The Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder called him, "the hardest left candidate ever nominated for president of the United States."

But Obama's campaign seemed to welcome the fight, not only as the hoped-for start of his campaign's next phase, but also as a welcome distraction from the primary in West Virginia. The campaign is girding for a huge loss that it hopes will not provide a comeback storyline for Senator Hillary Clinton's sagging campaign fortunes.

Obama's campaign is altogether trying to ignore the evening, with aides saying he will not give any sort of election night speech, because he is flying on to Michigan where he has events on Wednesday.

Both candidates campaigned across West Virginia on Monday, with Clinton's motorcade driving more than two hours through the winding hills of Appalachia, where she courted a relatively small number of voters in hopes of driving up her expected margin of victory. The Clinton camp believes she could win by as much as 25 points, and Clinton is counting on a big victory to impress undecided superdelegates, the party leaders who will most likely decide the nomination.

Clinton also wants to show strength in Kentucky and West Virginia — states Democrats have struggled to carry in presidential elections — not to mention, advisers say, pointing up what the Clinton campaign sees as the weakness of the Obama coalition. But advisers acknowledged that even if she won those states by wide margins, it was probably too late to change the dynamic of the nominating contest in her favor.

"Obama is so far ahead at this point, it is hard to see anything we do, even big wins, being a game-changer at this point," said one senior adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to assess Clinton's political fortunes.

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