Voters in the states of Indiana and North Carolina headed for polling stations today in the high-stake Democratic primaries with front runner Barack Obama is hoping to nudge Hillary Clinton out in the cliffhanger. Everyone is anxiously looking for the exit poll results.
Till a few weeks ago Obama, 47, who is bidding to be the first Black President of the US, was leading by a respectable margin in Indiana and by a huge margin in North Carolina.
But as campaigning came to an end late last night, the Illinois Democrat is said to be down by an average of 5 points in Indiana but holding at about eight points ahead in the other.
The Obama campaign still believes that it can win both.
Clinton's advisers have admitted that a victory in North Carolina would be the "dream" of the century, but appear more or less settled for a split decision.
Between Indiana and North Carolina, as many as 187 elected delegates are up for grabs apart from the 32 super delegates.
Obama leads the delegate count with 1724.5 delegates with Clinton at 1593.5. In the super delegate category Clinton holds a slender lead 259 to 235. It requires 2025 delegates to win the Democratic Party nomination.
Winning only one of the states means that the Clinton campaign will be getting ready to go to the stretch, until the very end on 3rd June or even beyond into the Convention floor in August.
The big question is what will the 61-year-old former first lady, who is hoping to be the first women President of the US, would do if she loses both Indiana and North Carolina.
It's still not clear whether she will thrown in her towel or persist with the next primaries especially in the states of West Virginia, Nebraska, Kentucky and Oregon over the span of next two weeks.
Indiana, pundits maintain, could be in the Clinton column as its demography resembles that of Ohio and Pennsylvania which the New York Senator won handily.
Indiana has been a Republican state for the last 40 years in Presidential elections and democratic primaries have hardly mattered in this mid-western state in the last four decades.
The state has been hard hit economically losing some 30,000 plus jobs in the manufacturing sector which is one reason why Clinton and Obama both focussed heavily on economic policies.
North Carolina, however, is a different cup of tea where the demographics hold the advantage for the Obama, 40 per cent of the primary voters in the party are African American where support for him runs very high at 90 per cent.
But in both Indiana and North Carolina the critical question is if Obama can get to the blue collar vote, considered as Clinton's sanctuary.
Obama's latest win in Guam on 4th May was his 31st victory of the campaign.
Clinton has won 16 contests, including the key primaries in Texas and Pennsylvania.
Source: By DDNEWS
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