US Presidential Elections: Friday update - 22 Feb.

Click HERE for the latest update.

The latest news from the Democrat race is Obama's victory among Democrats living abroad (66% of the vote) delivering his 11th straight win over Clinton. Hillary doesn't like losing, and she's not taking it gracefully. Clinton has accused Barack of "change you can Xerox" following accusations that he plagiarised a speech given by one of his supporters, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (See video). Hillary quipped: "If your candidacy is going to be about words, then it should be your own words." Barack quite smartly decided not to trade insults and took the moral high ground saying: "What we shouldn't be doing is tearing each other down, we should be lifting the country up" (Someone please pass me the LARGE sick bucket).

The democratic senators are now campaigning in Texas and Ohio, which together have a total of 334 delegates up for grabs. The Clinton camp see these primaries (4th March) as "must wins" if she is to claw back the lead from the runaway Obama campaign train. Barack now leads Hillary by 1,391 delegates to 1,250, though both are still way short of the 2,025 required to ensure victory.

On the republican side things are not going smoothly for poor old Senator John McCain. McCain has been accused by the New York Times of having an inappropriate relationship with a female lobbyist (Vicki Iseman) in 2000. The Senator said:

"I'm very disappointed in the article. It's not true... At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust or make a decision which in any way would not be in the public interest and would favor any one or any organization"

Of course this isn't going to have any bearing on the outcome of the republican contest. McCain is the outright leader with more than 600 more delegates under his belt than his nearest rival Huckabee (273 more delegates ensures a win). However, this kind of mud has been known to stick and it could reduce his chances of defeating the democrat candidate in the latter stages.

See you next Friday.