Pennsylvania is a big, diverse state, and it handed Hillary Rodham Clinton a broad victory in its Democratic presidential primary Tuesday night. The win keeps her hopes for her party’s nomination alive for at least another two weeks before voters go to the polls in Indiana and North Carolina on May 6.

With nearly all of the state's precincts reporting, Clinton defeated Barack Obama by 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent. In raw votes, she led Obama by more than 200,000 -- which will narrow his lead in the overall popular vote cast in the Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Her victory also added another piece of evidence to the argument she's making to the uncommitted Democratic superdelegates she needs to put her over the top: that the party can't risk nominating someone who cannot appeal to voters in large battleground states.

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But Clinton still faces an uphill battle. With only nine remaining contests (which account for 408 pledged delegates) and roughly 300 uncommitted superdelegates, Clinton will need to win about two-thirds of that total to reach the 2,025 mark to claim the nomination. Obama only needs to win roughly 45 percent to 50 percent of the remaining delegates up for grabs to claim the party’s nod.

Clinton's success in Pennsylvania was widespread: She captured 60 of the state's 67 counties and carried 49 of those counties with more than 60 percent of the vote. Clinton swamped Obama in blue-collar declining metropolitan areas such as Scranton and Pittsburgh, but she also beat him handily in fast-growing exurban counties such as Pike and Monroe on the New Jersey border that have become distant bedroom communities of New York City. She bested Obama in Pennsylvania's rural counties as well.

And perhaps most damaging to Obama's hopes, Clinton won by roughly 3 percentage points in the four suburban and exurban counties around Philadelphia. Despite his hefty spending advantage in the primary -- three-to-one, according to the Clinton campaign's estimate -- Obama was unable to carry turf that many observers thought would be friendly to him.

Obama's seven county victories came in Philadelphia, with its heavy black population; Centre and Union, home to Penn State and Bucknell universities, respectively; Dauphin, where the state capital of Harrisburg is located, and Delaware, the inner suburbs of Philadelphia, which both have relatively high black populations; Chester, exurban-suburban Philadelphia; and Lancaster, which tends to vote solidly Republican in general elections.

Pennsylvania has the third oldest population in the country after Florida and West Virginia, and the senior vote delivered again for Clinton. According to the National Election Pool exit poll conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC, 22 percent of Democratic primary voters were 65 or older, and they voted for Clinton over Obama, 63 percent to 37 percent. Another 37 percent of Democratic primary voters were 50 to 64 years old, and they also solidly backed Clinton over Obama, 56 percent to 44 percent. In Ohio, only 46 percent of the voters in the Democratic presidential primary were 50 and up.

Clinton handily carried women, who made up 59 percent of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary voters; Obama narrowly carried male voters.

Pennsylvania evinced the same educational divide that has become one the constants of the Democratic presidential race, with Obama winning college graduates and Clinton doing well among voters who don’t have a four-year degree. Obama narrowly carried college graduates, 51 percent to 49 percent, almost identical to his showing in the Ohio primary seven weeks ago. But Clinton won the non-college vote in Pennsylvania over Obama, 58 percent to 42 percent. That was nearly the same as the 58 percent to 40 percent advantage she held over Obama among non-college voters in the Buckeye State.

Obama's difficulty winning Catholic voters, and white Catholics in particular, also repeated itself in Pennsylvania. Clinton won a whopping 71 percent of the white Catholic vote, which constituted a third of Democratic primary-goers. Clinton won 65 percent of the white Catholic vote in Ohio, but it only made up one-fifth of the primary vote there.

According to an analysis by ABC News director of polling Gary Langer, the size of the white Catholic vote in Pennsylvania was roughly double what it has averaged in previous Democratic primaries. He noted that Clinton's strong showing among Catholics in Pennsylvania may have been related to the fact that they were less likely to be college graduates.

The racial polarization of the Democratic race continued in Pennsylvania, as Obama's victories among white voters in the Virginia and Wisconsin primaries in mid-February and Vermont's contest in early March, seemed to recede into the political background. In the Keystone State, Clinton carried white voters 62 percent to 38 percent, a slight dip from her 64 percent to 34 percent showing over Obama in Ohio. Among black voters, Obama won 89 percent to Clinton's 11 percent, almost identical to his 87 percent to 13 percent performance in Ohio.

The ongoing negative tone of the Clinton-Obama race may threaten the party's coalition in the fall campaign. According to the exit poll, 16 percent of Obama's supporters said they would vote for the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, if Clinton ended up being the Democratic standard-bearer; another 13 percent said they would sit out the presidential race.

Among Clinton's supporters, the prospects for general election defections looked even worse. About a quarter, 26 percent, said they would cast ballots for McCain if Obama became the Democratic nominee, and another 17 percent said they would not vote in the presidential election.

Still, these opinions are being voiced in the wake of a hard-fought contest in Pennsylvania, where both of the Democratic candidates accused each other of waging a negative campaign, and the disaffection with the other candidate might be more momentary than permanent. But Democratic insiders are growing anxious that the longer their nominating contest goes on, the harder it will be to unite and energize the party in the fall.

Nevertheless, if there is one thing that Democratic leaders can take encouragement from in Pennsylvania’s results, it was another huge turnout in a primary -- more than 2.3 million voters. In the 2004 presidential general election, Democratic nominee John Kerry won some 2.9 million votes in the Keystone State.