Record numbers of Maryland voters braved icy conditions on Tuesday to catapult Senator Barack Obama to the front of the race for the Democratic nomination, while helping to solidify Senator John McCain's hold on the Republican lead.
Obama campaigned in Maryland on the day before the primary, drawing crowds of nearly 16,000 at the University of Maryland, College Park and 10,000 at the 1st Mariner Arena in downtown Baltimore.
Supporters, including mulitple carpools of Hopkins students, gathered for the afternoon rally in downtown Baltimore around noon, braving the bitter cold for a speech that started after 5 pm. The line stretched around an entire block, snaking through city streets and disrupting traffic.
In preparation for the Maryland campaign, Hopkins students hosted an event for actor and Obama supporter Kal Penn, who campaigned for the senator in Arellano Theater on Friday.
The star of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle said that, before this campaign, he was politically independent.
It was Obama's message of unity, as well as his support for universal health care and opposition to the Iraq War that inspired Penn to begin campaigning for the senator in October.
"A lot of members canvassed door-to-door for much of the day, in the freezing rain," Laura Berlinsky-Schine, Media Coordinator for the Johns Hopkins Students for Barack Obama, said. "Most people had already voted."
Berlinsky-Schine, who registered to vote in Maryland and participated in Tuesday's primaries, also said, "Republicans and independents are voting for Obama too. He has cross-party appeal because he's such an exciting candidate. He's drawing support from a wide range of groups."
Alice Marks, a sophomore at Hopkins and a permanent Maryland resident, voted for the first time in Tuesday's Democratic primary, "To be honest, I didn't see a lot of campaigning in Maryland," she said. "I know that Sen. Obama stopped by Baltimore, and that was exciting for me. The only time I ever saw a Clinton supporter was the day of the election. I thought that was strange."
Like many Maryland voters, Marks supported Obama, and said she was not surprised that he won by such a large margin in Maryland, or that he did well in Baltimore.
Said Marks, "He really appeals to the people of Baltimore and Maryland. You really get a sense that he's for the working class, he's for people who need better jobs, he's for civil liberties, he's for bringing our troops home - a concern to a lot of families without as much money, whose children had to go fight in order to go to college. He stands for a lot that we need, especially in Baltimore."
Voter turnout was high in Maryland despite bad weather - high wind, freezing rain and black ice - which made getting to the polls a challenge for some.
A Maryland judge, in response, extended the polling period by 90 minutes. Polls closed at 9:30 instead of 8 to allow time for traffic to break up.
Maryland officials had estimated a 40 percent voter turnout for the state.
Polls indicate that over 745,000 votes were cast in the Democratic primary, and over 281,000 votes were cast in the Republican primary.
Obama and McCain swept the Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. primaries for the Democrats and Republicans respectively on Tuesday.
For McCain, this meant a return to form after a number of victories last weekend by former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-. McCain has achieved frontrunner status in the Republican race; currently, McCain has 821 delegates to Huckabee's 241.
In Maryland, McCain garnered 55 percent of the Republican vote; Huckabee followed with 29 percent. The remaining votes were split between Ron Paul, the third remaining Republican candidate, and former governor Mitt Romney and former mayor Rudy Giuliani, both of whom have dropped out of the race.
While the Republican race has been declared a sure thing for Sen. McCain by most, the outcome of the Democratic race is far from certain.
While Hillary Clinton was leading in delegates following Super Tuesday, she has since fallen behind; of the eight primaries that have been held since then, she has won none, receiving in all cases less than 45 percent of the vote, in many cases significantly so.
Obama's eight-state winning sweep has prompted much discussion of whether he might prove, in the next several months, to be the new Democratic frontrunner.
After Tuesday's primaries, poll results suggest that Obama's grip on certain demographics has grown stronger since Super Tuesday. In Tuesday's primaries, Obama won majorities of voters under 30, voters over 65, and rural voters.
According to exit polls in Maryland and Virginia, he may have won as many as six out of 10 female voters as well, a significant blow to the Clinton camp.
Obama won Maryland with 60 percent of the vote. Clinton garnered 38 percent.
Clinton's focus at present seems to have shifted towards Texas, where she has been campaigning extensively, and many of her hopes for the future of the race lie in that direction, as well as in April's Pennsylvania primary.
- Additional reporting by Farah Rahman and Ross Linker
