By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

Hillary Rodham Clinton won a convincing but perhaps anticlimactic victory Tuesday in West Virginia’s presidential primary, which she hopes will revive her campaign’s faint prospects for overtaking Barack Obama .

With 81 percent of precincts reporting at 11:20 p.m. eastern time, Clinton led Obama by 67 percent to 26 percent in West Virginia, a state where the underlying demographics had pointed to a huge Clinton victory. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards , who withdrew from the race in January but appeared on the ballot, had 7 percent.

The only suspense about the race was the size of Clinton’s margin of victory, which pre-primary polls had pegged as larger than 30 percentage points. West Virginia is overwhelmingly white and rural, and it is older and poorer than most of the rest of the states. Clinton has been polling strongly among voters in these demographic groups. Obama, who has been doing better among upper-income white voters and in urban centers that have ample African-American voters, all but conceded West Virginia to Clinton.

Clinton was poised to win all of West Virginia’s 55 counties. She racked up her largest vote percentages in the state’s 3rd District, which includes hardscrabble coal country and is represented by Democrat Nick J. Rahall II , who endorsed Obama.

Clinton can only hope that she gets a boost from the West Virginia result disproportionate to the small state’s meager influence in the delegate math. Just 28 pledged Democratic delegates were at stake in West Virginia, and Clinton’s victory — perhaps by 19-9 — will made only a slight dent in Obama’s lead among that group. Obama last week passed Clinton in the votes of unpledged “superdelegates” and has expanded his lead since then. Clinton has been trying to convince superdelegates that she’s a stronger general election candidate against John McCain , the presumed GOP nominee.

“I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign until everyone has had a chance to make their voices heard,” Clinton told supporters in Charleston, the West Virginia state capital, shortly after 9:00 p.m. eastern time. She added later that, despite what political pundits have said in recent days, “this race isn’t over yet.”

“I am in this race because I believe I am the strongest candidate,” Clinton said. “The strongest candidate to lead our party in November 2008, and the strongest president to lead our nation starting in January 2009. I can win this nomination if you decide I should, and I can lead this party to victory in the general election if you lead me to victory now.”

With the outcome of the West Virginia race clear, the two campaigns spent the days leading up to the contest managing expectations about the race. Earlier Tuesday, Clinton’s campaign issued a memorandum, “Why West Virginia Matters,” that ticked off some statistics about the importance of West Virginia in the November election and also said that Clinton has “once again proven her greater ability to win in the key swing states.”

The Democratic voting turns next to primaries on May 20 in Kentucky, where Clinton is favored to win, and in Oregon, where Obama is favored. The Democratic voting concludes with primaries in Puerto Rico on June 1 and in Montana and South Dakota on June 3.

Clinton also reiterated her call to seat Democratic delegations from Florida and Michigan, which the rule-making panel of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has barred from the August national convention because those states held primary elections on dates earlier than national party rules allow. Clinton won both states, though there was no organized campaigning in either state and Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot in Michigan. The DNC’s rule-making panel is expected to resolve the issue May 31, three days before the last Democratic primaries are held.

Excluding Florida and Michigan, it takes 2,025 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. The latest Associated Press tally, which includes the superdelegates, has Obama ahead, 1,875 to 1,712, so Obama needs to win fewer than one-third of the remaining delegates — including the superdelegates — to clinch the nomination. Obama had 164 more pledged delegates than Clinton entering Tuesday’s primary in West Virginia.

Obama’s campaign, in a memo it released Tuesday afternoon, said that “with 49 contests behind us and only six to go — including several states where we expect to do well — Barack Obama leads in pledged delegates, contests won, and superdelegates.”

Obama campaigned in West Virginia on Monday but appeared in Missouri on Tuesday, where he concentrated on the fall general election campaign in a state that should be one of the top battlegrounds in November. Speaking in Cape Girardeau just after 6:00 p.m. eastern time, Obama didn’t mention Clinton and focused on his differences with McCain.