While there’s still plenty of counting to be done, it looks like today’s primaries went as expected: a comfortable Obama win in North Carolina and a solid Clinton win in Indiana. The only surprise, really, is the margin of the victories.
Barack Obama swept to victory in the North Carolina primary on Tuesday but fell behind Hillary Rodham Clinton in Indiana, the last big-delegate prizes left in their long race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama’s win mirrored earlier triumphs in Southern states with large black populations, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina among them.
That made Indiana a virtual must-win Midwestern state for the former first lady, who was hoping to counter Obama’s persistent delegate advantage with a strong run through the late primaries. Returns from 40 percent of Indiana precincts showed Clinton with 56 percent of the vote to 44 percent for Obama.
In North Carolina, Obama was gaining 64 percent of the vote.
The economy was the top issue by far in both states, according to interviews with voters as they left their polling places.
Indiana exit polls charted a racial divide that has become familiar in a long, historic campaign pitting a black man against a white woman. Obama was gaining more than 90 percent of the black vote in Indiana, while Clinton was winning an estimated 61 percent of the white vote there, running ahead of her rival among white men as well as women.
Much more analysis in the morning once complete results are in.
UPDATE (1008): Clinton is up 52-48 in Indiana with 79% of precincts reporting and Obama is up 56-42 in North Carolina with 64% of precincts reporting, according to YahooNews.
