Hillary Clinton swept critical showdowns with Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday to keep her Democratic presidential bid alive, and John McCain clinched the Republican nomination and looked ahead to the November election.
The victories for Clinton, a New York senator, snapped Obama's winning streak at 12 and defied widespread predictions that defeats in Ohio and Texas would force her out of the White House race.
The hard-fought Democratic presidential duel now moves to contests in the next week in Wyoming and Mississippi and the next major showdown in Pennsylvania on April 22, with Clinton still trailing Obama in the pledged delegates who will choose the nominee at the August convention.
"We're going on, we're going strong, and we're going all the way," Clinton, 60, told roaring supporters in Columbus, Ohio. "We're just getting started."
McCain's four big victories in Vermont, Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island drove his last major rival, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, out of the race and gave McCain more than the 1,191 delegates needed to win the nomination.
President George W. Bush will endorse the Arizona senator at the White House on Wednesday, capping McCain's comeback from the political scrap heap last year when his campaign was down in the polls and counted out.
"I am very pleased to note that tonight, my friends, we have won enough delegates to claim with confidence, humility and a sense of great responsibility that I will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States," McCain, 71, told supporters in Dallas.
"The contest begins tonight," the former Navy fighter pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam said, looking ahead to a match-up with either Obama or Clinton in November.
Clinton's wins were the third time this year she has dodged a potential knockout blow from Obama. She won in New Hampshire after a loss in Iowa, and split the Super Tuesday contests after a blowout defeat in South Carolina.
