CHARLESTON, W. Va. - Hillary Rodham Clinton clobbered Barack Obama in West Virginia yesterday, but her late win in a small state was unlikely to halt Obama's march to the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton won the overwhelmingly white state in a walk - by a ratio of better than 2-1 - and used the results to argue she should not be counted out yet.

"I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign until everyone has had a chance to have their voices heard," she told a victory rally in Charleston.

"This race isn't over yet," she said. She belittled calls to end her campaign, which some in her party see as futile, and made a now-familiar appeal for campaign contributions to "continue this journey."

But she also sent conciliatory signals to Obama, saying she "deeply" admired him. And as she spoke, a group staffed by Clinton supporters, www.voteboth.com, used her win to push anew for an Obama-Clinton ticket as the only way to unify the party.

Obama turned to a friendlier political landscape, Oregon, which votes next week, and the fall campaign.

Obama campaigned yesterday in Missouri and planned to visit Michigan today. Both states are expected to be general-election battlefields.

"This is a state where we will compete to win when I am the Democratic nominee for president," the Illinois senator said in Cape Girardeau, Mo., in a speech that never mentioned Clinton.

Clinton, the New York senator, had no such luxury, being $20 million in debt and desperate for wins to keep her fading prospects alive.

Her win in West Virginia is unlikely to have much impact on the race now.

Just 28 delegates were at stake in West Virginia. Clinton won at least 16, Obama 7, and the rest were yet to be allocated, according to an Associated Press tally.

That left Obama with 1,882.5 delegates, to 1,713 for Clinton, out of 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination.

Obama leads in every category: state contests, delegates elected in primaries, superdelegates who get convention votes because of their status as elected or party officials, and the nationwide popular vote.

He already led in pledged delegates and pulled ahead of Clinton last week in superdelegates as more announced their support for his candidacy.

He also leads in the nationwide popular vote - even if the disputed primaries of Florida and Michigan are added to the total for the sake of argument, as Clinton did until recently.

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Roy Romer yesterday added his name to the list of superdelegates backing Obama, and he urged Clinton to drop out.

"This race, I believe, is over," said Romer, a former governor of Colorado.

With fewer than 400 delegates left - 189 to be awarded in the primaries remaining after yesterday's vote and the rest uncommitted superdelegates - it is possible that Obama could clinch the nomination by the time the primaries end June 3.

All it would take is for him to split delegates evenly in the remaining five primaries and take one of every three remaining superdelegates.

Clinton's campaign called West Virginia a critical state and said her win signaled that she alone could carry the state for Democrats in November.

"The Mountain State is used to picking winners," her campaign said in a memo. "Every nominee has carried the state's primary since 1976, and no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916."

Clinton again won a key voting bloc in West Virginia that the Democrats need in November - working-class whites.

In West Virginia, more than 90 percent of the votes were cast by whites, exit polls showed. One out of five whites said the race of the candidates was a factor, the second-highest percentage after Mississippi. Of them, only a third said they would vote for Obama if he were the Democratic nominee against McCain.

Democrat Scores An Upset in Miss.

A Democrat won a congressional seat yesterday in deeply conservative Mississippi in a race Republicans had tried to cast as a referendum on Barack Obama and the national Democratic Party.

Travis Childers was defeating Republican Greg Davis, 52 percent to 49 percent, to finish

a two-year term.

The seat was vacated when GOP incumbent Roger Wicker was named to the Senate after Trent Lott quit. Republicans had held the seat since 1994.

The win allows Democrats to add to their 235-199 majority - if only until November, when Childers, Davis and two others face off again. Yesterday's winner likely gains name recognition and a fund-raising edge.

- Associated Press

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