Jackson, Miss. ? Barack Obama coasted to victory in Mississippi’s Democratic primary Tuesday, the latest in a string of racially polarized presidential contests across the Deep South and a final tune-up before next month’s high-stakes race with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania.

Obama was winning roughly 90 percent of the black vote but only about one-quarter of the white vote, extending a pattern that carried him to victory in earlier primaries in South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.

His triumph seemed unlikely to shorten a Democratic marathon expected to last at least six more weeks – and possibly far longer – while Republicans and their nominee-in-waiting, Sen. John McCain, turn their attention to the fall campaign.

“Now we look forward to campaigning in Pennsylvania and around the country,” Maggie Williams, Clinton’s campaign manager, said in a written statement that congratulated Obama on his victory.

“I’m confident that once we get a nominee, the party is going to be unified,” Obama said as he collected his victory.

But in a race growing more contentious, he took a swipe at the way his rival’s campaign has conducted itself.

“We’ve been very measured in terms of how we talk about Senator Clinton,” he said. “I’ve been careful to say that I think Senator Clinton is a capable person and that should she win the nomination, obviously, I would support her. I’m not sure we’ve been getting that same approach from the Clinton campaign,” he said in on CNN.

Returns from 80 percent of Mississippi’s precincts showed Obama gaining 59 percent, to 39 percent for Clinton.

Obama picked up at least 17 of Mississippi’s 33 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, with five more to be awarded. He hoped for a win sizable enough to erase most if not all of Clinton’s 11-delegate gain from last week, when she won three primaries.

The Illinois senator had 1,596 delegates to 1,484 for Clinton. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination.

Obama leads Clinton among pledged delegates, 1,385-1,237 in The Associated Press count, while the former first lady has an advantage among superdelegates, 247-211.

There was little suspense about the Mississippi outcome, and both Clinton and Obama spent part of their day campaigning in Pennsylvania, which has 158 delegates at stake in a primary on April 22.

The volatile issue of race has been a constant presence in the historic Democratic campaign, and it resurfaced during the day in the form of comments by Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate and a Clinton supporter.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept,” she said in an interview with the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., that was published last Friday.

Clinton expressed disagreement with Ferraro’s comments, and said, “It’s regrettable that any of our supporters – on both sides, because we both have this experience – say things that kind of veer off into the personal.”

Obama called Ferraro’s remarks “patently absurd.”