CHARLESTON, W.VA. - Hillary Rodham Clinton coasted to a large but largely symbolic victory in working-class West Virginia on Tuesday, handing Barack Obama one of the worst defeats of the campaign yet scarcely slowing his march toward the Democratic presidential nomination.

"The White House is won in the swing states. And I am winning the swing states," Clinton told cheering supporters at a victory rally.

She coupled praise for Obama with a pledge to persevere in a campaign in which she has become the decided underdog. "This race isn't over yet," she said. "Neither of us has the total delegates it takes to win."

Obama looked ahead to the Oregon primary later in the month and to the general election campaign against Republican John McCain, but the West Virginia defeat underscored his weakness among blue-collar voters who will be pivotal in the fall.

"This is our chance to build a new majority of Democrats and independents and Republicans who know that four more years of George Bush just won't do," Obama said in Missouri, which looms as a battleground state in November.

Clinton's triumph approached the 70 percent of the vote she gained in Arkansas, her best state to date. It came courtesy of an overwhelmingly white electorate composed of the kinds of voters who have favored her throughout the primaries. Nearly a quarter were 60 or older, and a similar number had no education beyond high school. More than half were in families with incomes of $50,000 or less, and the former first lady was wining a whopping 69 percent of their votes.

Clinton won at least 16 of the 28 delegates at stake in West Virginia and Obama won at least seven, with five more to be allocated.

That left Obama with 1,882.5 delegates, to 1,713 for Clinton, out of 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination. The Democratic win Tuesday in a Mississippi special election increased by one the number of delegates needed to win the nomination.

Clinton's aides contended that her strength with blue-collar voters -- already demonstrated in primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana -- makes her the more electable candidate in the fall.

In her remarks, Clinton said, "I deeply admire Senator Obama," but she added, "Our case is stronger." She said she had won roughly 17 million votes in the primaries and caucuses to date.

Clinton arranged a meeting with superdelegates for today. About 250 of them remain publicly uncommitted. Superdelegates are party leaders who attend the convention as delegates by virtue of their positions and are not selected in primaries and caucuses.

The delegate tally aside, the former first lady struggled to overcome an emerging Democratic consensus that Obama effectively wrapped up the nomination last week with a victory in the North Carolina primary and a narrow loss in Indiana.

He picked up four superdelegates during the day, including Roy Romer, former Democratic Party chairman.

Only five more primaries remain on the calendar, beginning next week in Kentucky and Oregon, then Puerto Rico on June 1 and Montana and South Dakota two days later.

There's another important date on the calendar, though -- the May 31 meeting of a convention committee that will hear Clinton's appeal to seat the delegations from disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan.

Clinton has long argued to have the delegates seated -- a decision that would cut into Obama's delegate advantage -- even though the primaries were held so early in the year that they violated Democratic Party rules.

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