11:52 p.m. | The Wrap: Senator Clinton won the state by nearly 10 points. We won’t really know until the results come in from the suburbs, where this thing is still a squeaker. Those voters are torn!

It’s neck and neck in Montgomery County. With 39 percent of the vote in, Mrs. Clinton led 51-49 percent. In Delaware County, with 75 percent reporting, it was 51-49 Obama. Our friends in Chester were just posting 22 percent of the vote and Mr. Obama was ahead, 54-46. Half of Bucks was in, and Mrs. Clinton maintained a 2-1 lead. Despite its image as gentrified horse country, that’s only part of the story; Bucks is also home to working class neighborhoods and converted old mills like the Fairless Works (where both she and Mr. Obama campaigned).

In Philadelphia, we wondered what might have gone wrong, but that was an early read. The results were as lopsided as they were expected to be. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Obama led by 65-35, or about 130,000 votes.

That’s a big win but not enough to offset Mrs. Clinton’s big margins across the rest of the state. Basically, she crushed him, especially in those much-discussed older, Catholic, working-class regions.

In Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), she won 55-45. In the counties around there, she racked up her best margins in the state and perhaps her best in the entire country. Fayette County, in southwest Pa., voted for her 79-21; Westmoreland was hers, 69-31. This is “Deer Hunter” territory, full of Reagan Democrats.

Her ancestral county of Lackawanna, around Scranton, an old coal region where her grandfather worked in the lace mill and where her father is buried, also came through for her, 74-26.

Two small bright spots for Mr. Obama: He won Lancaster County convincingly, 55-45. The mayor there was on his side, and he spent a lot of time there. The other: Center County, home to State College, also known as Penn State. The kids came out.

Bottom line, Mrs. Clinton’s sweep of the working-class men is her best selling point to the superdelegates and a big danger sign for Mr. Obama.

The night gave her a bounce in her overall popular vote; we can’t tell yet by just how much. The delegate situation won’t be sorted out until the morning; there were 158 delegates up to be divided.

The state proved a big plus for her, despite the mixed message in the suburbs. She can only hope that it had the desired effect of fueling doubts about Mr. Obama’s electability.



11:05 p.m. | Milking It: Our colleague Michael Luo, who’s keeping track of the money in this campaign, tells us that Clinton officials are saying they are experiencing their best

night ever in fund-raising online, bringing in well over $1 million in

the two hours since she was declared the winner.

11 p.m. | Counting: We just checked in with elections officials in Chester County, where only 72 of 224 precincts have reported. They say they had a huge turnout and were still getting calls _ it’s 11 p.m.! _ from officials at various polling places about how to handle provisional ballots. “They’re still at the polls wrapping things up,” said a worker at election HQ in West Chester. The Web site (www.chesco.org/election) is also really slow.

10:51 p.m. | Tit-for-Tat: Mr. Obama takes on Senator McCain in a big way. This is what he says first off, after congratulating Senator Clinton for her win tonight: “After 14 long months, it’s easy to forget this from time to time – to lose sight of the fierce urgency of this moment.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit-for-tat that consumes our politics; the bickering that none of us are entirely immune to, and that trivializes the profound issues – two wars, an economy in recession, a planet in peril, issues that confront our nation.”

(And an ad waiting to be made: The shoutout to the frat boys standing behind Mr. Obama; they’re a standing bit of product placement for Abercrombie & Fitch.)

10:45 p.m. | Obama’s Up: Senator Obama’s campaign has released text of his remarks.

He’s up now. And thanking John Mellencamp for being in Indiana.

10:34 p.m. | Family: Former President Bill Clinton who doesn’t usually show up at these things, is with her tonight. (As is Chelsea, who usually does.) He may have made a difference in some of those small counties, which went solidly for her. He’s ready to roll forward, with five events scheduled for tomorrow in North Carolina.

10:27 p.m. | Taking on Obama’s Strength: “Because of you, the tide is turning,” Mrs. Clinton told the crowd. “We were up against a formidable opponent who outspent us 3-1. He broke every spending record in this state, trying to knock us out of the race. Well, the people of Pennsylvania had other ideas about that.”

Here are the actual numbers on TV spending, from the Campaign Media Analysis Group, in the last 30 days. In Philadelphia, Mrs. Clinton spent $2.1 million compared with $4.7 by Mr. Obama. In Pittsburgh, Mrs. Clinton spent $630,00 compared with Mr. Obama’s $1.9 million.

10:18 p.m. | She Takes the Stage: Senator Clinton talks about the road from Pennsylvania to Pennsylvania Avenue. She frames her win in a way that superdelegates can understand. She said she and Mr. Obama were judged “side by side” during the campaign, and each made “our best case.”

“You listened,” she said, “and today you chose.”

Update: In her speech tonight, Senator Clinton once again invoked the women’s pull, talking about really elderly women who didn’t have the right to vote and younger women who were now getting the chance to see a woman running for president. Full text of her speech here.

10:15 p.m. | Results Lag: What does sophisticated Montgomery County have in common with rural Potter County? No results! Zero.

In fact, all four suburbs seem to be lagging behind the rest of the state, even behind Philadelphia. Chester has reported zero also. Delaware County has about a third counted and is so far giving the edge to Mrs. Clinton. In Bucks, 10 percent of the vote is in and it’s going 2-1 for Mrs. Clinton.

In Philadelphia, with 76 percent of the vote in, Mr. Obama is ahead 2-1. That’s not the big margin that he needed there. There will be a lot of post-election analysis about what went wrong for him in the city.

Get Ready for the Speech: Mrs. Clinton is coming up on stage. She’s in Philadelphia. Mr. Rendell is about to introduce her.

10:04 p.m. | Mapping the Returns: Check out our map.

If you’re reading us, you’ve probably already seen it. But it’s great. You just click on a county and the latest results pop up. So you can play along at home.

10:03 p.m. | Divining the Capitol: How to read the early returns from Dauphin County, where Harrisburg, the state capitol, is located? It’s the roost for Governor Rendell, who is Mrs. Clinton’s biggest fan.

Didn’t all those state workers get the memo? Another theory — the Democrats who live in and near Harrisburg are in fact more liberal than other Democrats in the state.

Either way, this is a bit embarrassing for the governor. But we’ll see what the suburbs do. They may be a better measure of Mr. Rendell’s influence. Or not; the well-educated suburban voters are less likely than most to vote for someone based on an endorsement.

Anyway, the suburbs are still out, although earliest returns suggest Mrs. Clinton is slightly ahead in Delaware County.

9:47 p.m. | Obama Steps Off the Plane: From our colleague Jeff Zeleny: Mr. Obama learned of his defeat as he landed in Indiana about 9:38 p.m. He huddled with aides at the front of his campaign plane, but did not speak to reporters. He intended to address the Pennsylvania results during a speech scheduled to begin at 10:45 p.m. Stay tuned.

9:39 p.m. | Signs, Signs, Signs: Check out the picture of the Clinton rally on our site. What jumps out is how many union signs are there. We noticed this at Senatr Clinton’s rally late Monday night at the Palestra. The unions — AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers among them — have stood by her. This may be good for the TV backdrop but it emphasizes her institutional support, not a rising up of the grassroots.

9:35 p.m. | Calling It: The Times just weighed in, to declare Senator Clinton the winner in the Pennsylvania primary.

9:30 p.m. | The Clinton Camp: Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and longtime Clinton loyalist, just said on CNN: “They couldn’t put us away here, they couldn’t put us away in Ohio, Texas, New Hampshire. We’re not giving up anywhere. We’re going to compete; there’s nine contests yet to go. 700 delegates yet to be chosen. There’s a long way to go in this nominating battle.”

9:25 p.m. | What’s Next?: Whatever her margin of victory, Mrs. Clinton is leaving no doubt that this race goes forward. She’s on most of the morning shows Wednesday and then is on to North Carolina. She’ll be joined there by Hugh Shelton, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who endorsed her last month. It’s Indiana on Friday and Saturday.

9:15 p.m. | Who’s Talking First? Senator Clinton is due on TV a bit before 10 p.m., in time for the local news. Mr. Obama is on a plane, headed to a rally in Indiana. (That’s a Clintonian strategy — if the news is bleak, jump ahead to the next proving ground.) It’s not clear when Mr. Obama will go before the cameras, but in this case, it looks as if the winner will be on before the loser. Election Night etiquette is out the window.

9:09 p.m. | Networks Call for Clinton: Well, the networks are calling this a win for Senator Clinton. In fact, Fox News and MSNBC went first. The Associated Press chimed in at 8:57. CNN followed suit at 9:04. They are basing this on exit polls, although no more than 5 percent of the vote had been reported. Of course, she was expected to win, but the big mystery of the night remains — what’s her margin? Maybe they’ll tell us when 10 percent of the vote is in!

9 p.m. | Patterns: More from the exit polls while we continue to wait for results: Not surprisingly, both candidates are doing well among the same groups they have in other states.

Mrs. Clinton was leading among older voters, women and those who are less affluent and less educated. In fact, among white union members with no college education, she is winning almost three-quarters of the vote. That’s significant.

As we said above (or below, depending on how you’re reading), this has to be troubling to superdelegates who are weighing how Mr. Obama would stand up in a general election.

At the same time, Mr. Obama is winning black voters and those under 45 overwhelmingly. He’s also got the college grads.

Geographically, he is doing best in Philadelphia and its suburbs, as expected, while Mrs. Clinton is winning the majority of the vote in the rest of the state. The question, obviously, is what the numbers are. They are sloooowww coming in.

8:41 p.m. | Uh-Oh, Left Out: One other tidbit from Pa. elections officials: They say a lot of people who are independents have been showing up, thinking they could vote in the Democratic contest. Too bad they weren’t paying attention earlier. As Caucus readers know, you have to be registered as a Democrat to vote in the party’s primary. That shuts off a stream of voters who have been helpful to Mr. Obama in other states. Their absence tonight could obviously hurt him.

8:38 p.m. | Waiting, Waiting: Hey, where’s the action? Voters are still standing in line in Pa. Nothing but commercials on TV. This could be a long night. We know you want to switch to American Idol. We’ll give you those results too.

8:30 p.m. | White Men Weigh In: Fifty-five percent of white men are backing Mrs. Clinton, according to the latest exit polls. If that holds, that’s a bad sign for Mr. Obama — not just for tonight, but down the road in making the argument that he is the better general election candidate.

8:20 p.m. | Bucks County Dispatch: In Bucks County, another big important suburban county, results probably won’t start being posted until 9 p.m., Deena Dean, the top election official there, tells us.

She said she didn’t know yet if turnout was especially high. But she said there was just a ton of paperwork for officials to complete at each place (counting absentee ballots, the write-ins and the results from the machines. Then they have to close the machines down, transfer the numbers to return sheets, etc.). Then they have to physically drive the results to one of two drop-off points. She didn’t expect to see the first results until 9 p.m.

Bucks is another county that was historically Republican and just turned blue. It has some blue-collar areas along with affluent ones. Hard to predict how this one will tilt.

8:11 p.m. | Surprise!: Guess what? John McCain has won the Republican primary in Pennsylvania!

8 p.m. | Polls Are Closing Suburban Montgomery County won’t have its results until at least 10 p.m., we just learned from election officials. This is crucial because Montgomery is the third biggest county in the state, and results will be meaningless without Montgomery, which is perceived as tilting toward Mr. Obama.

We just talked to Joe Passarella, the top election official there, who said he didn’t expect to start posting results until at least 10 p.m.

Turnout is high, he said, and the county had a big jump in registration because so many Republicans switched to become Democrats. In fact, the county just flipped to blue from red, for the first time since Reconstruction.

In any case, Mr. Passarella said the poll workers had a lot to do, including counting the absentee ballots, before they could post the results. He added that the polls were closing on time, but there were still a lot of people in line, and officials can’t post final results until everyone has voted.

7:50 p.m. | Voter Identity: The Committee of Seventy, the watchdog group in Philadelphia, says it has reports of “numerous issues with party identification in voter registration logs.” Apparently some counties have listed people as independents, even though they’re Democrats. Not sure how widespread the problem is, but voters should be able to get provisional ballots, which would let them vote anyway.

7:30 p.m. | The Ad Wars: Voters are telling exit pollsters that they didn’t much like that flurry of negative ads in the last few days. And yet a majority said those ads were very important or somewhat important in their decisions. This is evidence of what political operatives often say — that people say they don’t like it when candidates go negative and yet they do pay attention to it. In other words, it works.

7:25 p.m. | Polls Close Soon:

Hi readers,

Polls close in Pennsylvania in a little more than 30 minutes. We began posting a couple of hours ago, and you can check out the lay of the land there. (What to Watch For.) We’ll be referring back to that periodically, to give you a sense of where the vote is coming from and what it means.

We’re beginning the live-blogging here, and we’ll keep you up to date with our own analysis as well as tidbits from around the blogosphere, TV land and our colleagues in the field.

Gov. Ed Rendell, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s de facto campaign manager in Pennsylvania, is on MSNBC right now, saying she’ll win by 7 or 8 points. Mr. Rendell loves politics and loves talking about the game more than most pols. You think we’ll hear from him again tonight? (As much as he loves to talk politics, he loves to talk politics on TV.)

The exit polls earlier today showed that Pennsylvanians find the economy uppermost on their minds, many suggesting the nation was already in a recession. (President Bush asserted otherwise today, saying the economy was only in a slowdown.) Our colleague Larry Rohter blogged about the surveys here.