Why can't Obama make progress with hardworking voters who can't vote in a general election? Does this non-voter voter problem expose weakness in the fall?SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Clinton claimed victory in Puerto Rico on Sunday and insisted that she is leading Sen. Barack Obama in the popular vote.
Clinton won 68 percent of the vote compared with Obama's 32 percent. Her vote tally was 263,120; his was 121,458.
The win gives Clinton the larger share of Puerto Rico's 55 delegates.
The Democratic primary season ends Tuesday when Montana and South Dakota cast their votes.
"When the voting concludes on Tuesday, neither Sen. Obama nor I will have the number of delegates to be the nominee," she said in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
"I will lead the popular vote; he will maintain a slight lead in the delegate count," she said.
Obama leads in the overall delegate count -- 2,070 to Clinton's 1,915.
A candidate needs 2,118 to claim the Democratic nomination.
Also, I'm going to make my baseless predictions for Tuesday.
Montana: Obama 67, Clinton 33.
South Dakota: Obama 62, Clinton 38.
Obama has done very well this cycle in states in the Mountain West, both should be fairly easy, although I don't think he'll be able to go over the top in delegates on Tuesday. It will probably be some time later in the week given the constant trickle of superdelegate endorsements. He only needs 30 or so but there haven't been any cases so far of 15 superdelegates or more declaring in one day.
I also base this on the rather bizarre case that Obama has won almost every state with an African-American population either less than 4%, or larger than 16%. Clinton has carried states with intermediate values almost as reliably (New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania come to mind).
Montana: 0.62% African-American
South Dakota: 0.90% African-American
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