By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton scored an overwhelming victory Tuesday in Kentucky’s presidential primary but suffered a loss in Oregon to front-running rival Barack Obama that brought him closer to the brink of clinching the Democratic nomination.

With 99.2 percent of the vote counted, Clinton led Obama 65.5 percent to 30 percent. The rest of the voters chose an “uncommitted” option or backed former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards , who withdrew from the race in January.

Clinton’s big win in Kentucky was comparable to her 40-point victory a week earlier in West Virginia, which borders Kentucky and also is dominated by white voters of modest education and income that have backed Clinton heavily over Obama. In 1992 and 1996, President Bill Clinton carried Kentucky, which has voted Republican in seven of the last 10 presidential elections.

In Oregon, which has a unique vote-by-mail primary, Obama was projected as the winner shortly after 11 p.m. eastern time, the deadline to submit ballots to county election officials. Wednesday morning, with 89 percent of the precincts counted, Obama led Clinton 58 to 41 percent.

Clinton and Obama, in their primary night speeches, took two different views of the remaining battle for the nomination.

Addressing supporters in Louisville around 8:15 p.m. eastern time, Clinton said that voters in the disputed states of Florida and Michigan “deserve to have those votes counted” and claimed that “we’re winning the popular vote” using her campaign’s calculations.

But Obama, speaking at an outdoor rally in Des Moines where his Iowa defeat of Clinton helped changed the chemistry of the campaign, declared a couple of hours later: “Tonight Iowa, in the fullness of spring, with the help of those who stood up from Portland to Louisville, we have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people. And you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States of America.”

Obama was projected to win enough of the 51 delegates at stake in Kentucky to garner a majority of the 3,253 delegates to the Democratic national convention that are pledged to support a candidate. There also are 797 unpledged “superdelegates” — including Rep. Travis W. Childers , D-Miss., who was sworn in Tuesday. It takes 2,026 of the 4,050 delegates to secure the nomination. The Associated Press’ count as of noon Wednesday had Obama leading Clinton, 1,961 to 1,779 in the overall delegate count — meaning that Obama was just 65 delegates short of clinching the Democratic nomination.

Obama praised Clinton and expressed his admiration for presumed Republican nominee John McCain , but described the Republican contest for the nomination as one in which the candidates tried to “out-Bush the other and that’s a contest that John McCain won.”

Clinton ran up astronomical margins in eastern Kentucky, one of the nation’s poorest areas. In Pike County, which borders Virginia and West Virginia, Clinton had 91 percent of the vote. In next-door Floyd County, Clinton had 92 percent of the vote. Obama defeated Clinton in Jefferson County, which includes a large black population in Louisville, and in Fayette County, which takes in the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

Obama was expected to win a majority of the 52 pledged delegates in Oregon, which is wealthier and more culturally liberal than Kentucky.

Obama and his campaign aides had identified winning a majority of pledged delegates as an important benchmark. They expect that more undeclared or undecided superdelegates will follow their lead and soon announce their support for Obama.

Clinton’s campaign has said that the threshold for clinching the nomination is 2,210 delegates because the 2,026 figure excludes the Florida and Michigan delegations. Clinton prevailed in both states, though the candidates pledged not to campaign in either state and Obama’s name didn’t appear on the ballot in Michigan. A rule-making panel of the Democratic National Committee will decide May 31 if and how to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations.