WISCONSINREPORT.COM (02/20/08) - Illinois U.S. Senator Barack Obama gained a larger lead in Democratic delegates following yesterday's win over Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary races. Unofficial counts today show Obama with 1168 delegates gained from primaries and cacuses held so far. Hillary Clinton has 1018 delegates, without including Super Delegates. That means that Obama is now about 150 regular delegates ahead of Hillary, following the 59 to 41 percent Wisconsin win over the U.S. Senator from New York. After strong campaigning in Wisconsin, Obama spoke to an audience of 19,000 in Houston, Texas.

Obama told the Houston audience that the race is not over yet. He told them he not only needed supporters in Texas to vote in the Texas primary on March 4th, he also needed them to vote for him in the November General Election against the Republican opponent, should he (Obama) represent Democrats on the November ballot when the primary season and convention are all done.

The next states in the primary race toward the Democratic Convention in Colorado at the end of summer, 2008, are Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island. Obama's chances in the four states is changing from day to day.

Hillary Clinton, was ahead of Obama in Ohio and Texas a few days ago, but, the difference in the polling has been getting smaller, almost every hour, it seems. The tallies in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island will take place the night of March 4th.

In Houston, Barack Obama noted to the audience that Texas allows advance voting, and he said forms were available at the event that would allow anyone who wanted to do so, to vote in advance.

Barack Obama encouraged everyone at the Houston speech to vote early, and asked them to also show up for the Texas caucusing March 4th on his behalf. He told the audience that his campaign would be able to gain even more delegates if they did both. Texas has a two-fold primary-caucus system, and, doing both is permitted, according to the rules in Texas.

During his Houston speech, Obama thanked the people of Wisconsin for going out in the cold weather to give him his ninth straight victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

Obama gained 40 delegates in Wisconsin, according to preliminary, unofficial statistics. Hillary Clinton gained 28 delegates for her second place finish in the Wisconsin popular vote in the primary process.

Barack also won Tuesday in Hawaii, which is the state he grew up in, to gain a few more delegates.

Another nationally televised debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be held on CNN tomorrow (Thursday, February 21st) in Texas.

Next Tuesday, the two will square off in an MSNBC televised cable debate in Ohio.

It's expected that, both of the candidates will likely go into more detail at the next two debates, about what each of the Democrat candidates would do to solve the problems and challenges that each of them see will be present following being sworn in.