Just moments after the polls closed in North Carolina, CNN projected that Barack Obama had won the biggest remaining delegate prize in the contentious Democratic nomination fight. With 46 percent of precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton leads Obama in Indiana by a 56 to 44 percent margin, though CNN said it could not yet call the race because a number of key areas where Obama is expected to do well had not yet been tallied. At press time, with 11 percent of the vote in, Obama led Clinton in North Carolina by a 65 to 35 percent margin.
A total of 218 delegates were up for grabs in the two contests, the biggest one-day delegate haul left in the primary season, and Clinton said she was well aware of how critical these typically afterthought states were in the race. "This primary election on Tuesday is a game-changer," Clinton said, according to CNN. "This is going to make a huge difference in what happens going forward. The entire country, probably even a lot of the world, is looking."
With Obama rapidly closing the gap in pledged superdelegates and not enough pledged delegates left in the remaining races for Clinton to overtake him at her current rate, the New York senator would have to win an improbable 70 percent of the vote in the final five primaries and one caucus to catch up to Obama, who leads her in both pledged delegates and the popular vote.
As it stands now, neither Democrat is likely to win the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination by June 3, the date of the final primary in South Dakota, so it will likely fall on the 796 superdelegates — governors, party officials and members of Congress — to decide the race.
Hours before the polls closed, CNN predicted that Clinton had pulled ahead and was expected to win by 4 percentage points in Indiana, where the candidates had been in a dead heat until last week, and where Obama was expected to feel the effects of a recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the Hoosier State's photo-ID law, which could make it difficult for some younger voters without official Indiana driver's licenses or state ID cards to cast their ballots. The Indiana primary held a prize of 84 delegates, while North Carolina promised 134; the win there was the first big one for Obama since his victory in Mississippi in March. Obama was on track to win North Carolina by a comfortable margin, after being up by as many as 25 points in the months leading up to the primary.
As they crisscrossed both states over the past two weeks, the candidates were mostly civil, though they repeatedly exchanged fire over Clinton's support for a summer repeal of the 18-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax, a plan Obama has labeled as pandering for votes and which has drawn poor marks from hundreds of leading economists.
The New York Times reported that voters in both states were deluged by a wave of attack ads from both sides that were more intense than any seen so far in the primary season. The peak came with a Clinton ad on Monday that asked the question, "What has happened to Barack Obama?" countered by an Obama ad that parried, "We need honest answers and a president we can trust." The two candidates spent $9.5 million combined in the two states, almost as much as Democratic Senator John Kerry spent on TV ads during the entire 2004 primary season.
For Clinton, the potential Indiana win could be a chance to show that she is continuing to turn the tide in what had been a losing battle against Obama and further proof, after her wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania, that she has the ability to take big states by tapping into her base of white, blue-collar supporters, a constituency Obama has struggled to connect with.
Obama, who polls suggested was still feeling the ill effects of his break with his controversial former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was looking for a pair of wins that could prove he is a viable candidate who can win the general election. According to the Times, Clinton's best hope for winning the nomination at this point is to get superdelegates to vote against the pledged delegates after the primaries wrap up on June 3, with the hope that despite trailing Obama in pledged delegates, she can take the lead in the popular vote. The Times reported that Obama currently leads Clinton in the popular vote, 14.8 million to 14.2 million, not counting the votes of Florida and Michigan, whose primary numbers are not being tallied because they pushed their primaries up against party wishes.
With only 217 delegates left in the primaries, the candidates go at it again next Tuesday in West Virginia, a state whose makeup appears to favor Clinton. That election will be followed by Kentucky and Oregon on May 20, Puerto Rico on June 1 and Montana and South Dakota on June 3.
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