Hillary wins | Analysis: Groundhog Day | How the night unfolded | Video: Clinton's speech | Video: Obama's speech | Graphic: the battle for Pennsylvania

The Hillary faithful gathered, dressed to party if possible, preparing to mourn if necessary, as the Pennsylvania primary drew to its exhilarated, exhausted close.

In the hideous rococo ballroom of a downtown Pennsylvania hotel, the Hillary Clinton campaign had choreographed everything. In one steel pen were caged the journalists; in the next were herded campaign workers; ranged along the far wall were dignitaries and in between them was the podium on which Hillary would make her speech.

On the television it would look like an explosion of delirious/sad but brave Hillary fans. From behind the cameras it looked like an astonishing mess, a tangle of cables and old sandwiches. Rows of identical anchorwomen with identical blonde hair sat and primped and powdered awaiting their moment, talking avidly to themselves.

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In the corridors, famous, half-recognisable pundits flitted back and forth awaiting the first exit polls: half-recognisable because in the made-up flesh they are always more orange, and fatter than on television.

Just about everything in the room was abuzz with nervous energy, with the exception of Diesel, the police sniffer dog, an Alsatian who lay in a corner, looking bored. “Are you the reporter from the New York Daily News,” a sweating, bearded man asked anxiously and then ran away without waiting for a reply, murmuring: “Oh God, I’ve lost him, I’ve lost him.”

After a gruelling primary campaign that began in March, for many of those following the great Obama-Clinton face-off the race has taken on a surreal, almost delirious quality. A man beyond deadline, and possibly beyond hope, leaned against the bar erected out of sight behind the ballroom and drank steadily with a thousand-mile stare.

As the polls closed, the party workers sent up a cheer, robust enough, and then clamped themselves back onto their cell phones to await the first exit polls. Then when they did arrive, indicating that Ms Clinton had won, the noise began to swell: in the streets outside.

The mayor of Philadelphia, the divinely-named Michael Nutter, was rumoured to have entered the building. He proved to be a myth, which somehow summed up the uncertainty. I have interviewed some very strange people in my time but when I get the chance the talk to a real, bona fide Nutter, he disappears.

This has been a long and extraordinary primary, in an epic battle for the Democratic nomination. As the moment of truth dawned, one could almost hear the sound of fingernails being chewed, and the voices of the rehearsing anchorwomen grew more shrill, and somewhere in the bowels of the hotel Clinton’s experts pored over their numbers, and waited, and then began to feel a small blush of confidence. Only Diesel the Dog sat in the corner, and wondered, like everyone else in the room, whether something explosive might happen soon.

Finally, more than two hours after the closure of the polls, Mrs Clinton took the stage in an electric blue outfit with an electric speech of victory. “It’s a long road to sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue and it runs right through the state of Pennsylvania,” she said. “The American people don’t quit, and they deserve a leader who won’t quit either.”

Flanked by husband and daughter, she thanked her supporters and then, almost immediately, asked for donations, to maintain a campaign that is running dry financially.

“We still have lot of work ahead of us…I might stumble and I might fall down, but with your help I will always get back up.”

And with that the extraordinary, unended presidential primary stumbled into the night, and headed to Indiana and North Carolina.

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