Sen. Hillary Clinton disclosed she lent $5 million to her cash-short campaign prior to Super Tuesday in an effort to avoid being outspent by rival Sen. Barack Obama.

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"I think the results last night proved the wisdom of my investment," said the former first lady, one day after trading victories with Obama in a Super Tuesday string of contests from coast to coast.

Battling for every dollar and delegate, Obama raised $7.2 million in Super Tuesday's wake and Clinton pulled in $6.4 million, stunning totals reflecting the intensity of their neck-and-neck race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Top Clinton advisers offered to work without pay, but that wasn't necessary with the sudden influx of cash.

National campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, in a conference call with 300 Clinton fundraisers nationwide, assured them: "All staff 100 percent paid. Not an issue."

Obama won 13 states on Tuesday while Clinton took eight, including delegate-rich California and New York. An Associated Press delegate count gave Clinton 1,045, more than half of the 2,025 needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Obama was right behind with 960.

But the counting is far from over. When it is, the Obama camp predicted it would best Clinton by 13 delegates, 847 to 834. And NBC News predicts that Obama will wind up with 840 to 849 delegates, compared to 829 to 838 for Clinton for the day.

If the Obama camp's delegate scenario plays out the way it predicts, Clinton would still lead in the total delegate count, which according to AP, stands at 1,000-902. But her lead would be narrower. And the narrative from Super Tuesday moving forward would be that Obama won the day outright.

Obama offered some pointed advice to members of Congress and other party leaders who will attend the national convention this summer as superdelegates, who are not chosen in primaries or caucuses.

If he winds up winning more delegates in voting than the former first lady, they "would have to think long and hard about how they approach the nomination when the people they claim to represent have said, 'Obama's our guy,"' he said.

With little time to rest, both Obama and Clinton pointed toward the next contests, primaries in Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia plus caucuses in Nebraska, Washington, Maine and the Virgin Islands in the next week. In all, those states offer 353 delegates.

Clinton said she would contest Obama everywhere, although senior aides conceded Obama would have more to spend on ads.

"We will have funds to compete," Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, told reporters in a conference call. "But we're likely to be outspent again."