In this case, a split was not a draw. Despite narrowly winning Indiana, while losing North Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not fundamentally improve her chances of securing the Democratic presidential nomination. If anything, Clinton’s hopes for overtaking Senator Barack Obama dwindled further on Tuesday night.
For Obama, the outcome came after a brutal period in which he was on the defensive over the inflammatory comments of his former pastor.

That he was able to hold his own under those circumstances should allow him to make a case that he has proved his resilience in the face of questions about race, patriotism and political mettle — the very kinds of issues that the Clinton campaign has suggested would leave him vulnerable in the general election.
Beating Obama in Indiana was an achievement for Clinton. But it was hardly the kind of strong victory she posted in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

And when paired with his comfortable victory in North Carolina — which Obama pointedly described in his victory speech as “a big state, a swing state” — it hardly seemed enough for Clinton to convince the so-called uncommitted superdelegates to rally around her candidacy.

Her showing in the two states did not permit Clinton to cut into Obama’s lead in pledged delegates or his overall lead in the popular vote. Indeed, Obama may have widened his delegate lead over Clinton, an outcome with mathematic and political resonance.

The result was so tight as to deprive her of the kind of clear-cut victory that would make it easy for her to fend off calls for her to drop out, raise money and campaign on into West Virginia in advance of a primary there next Tuesday where her campaign is confident of doing well.

In the last several weeks, Clinton, seizing on the campaign’s new focus on the weakening economy, seemed to find new energy and a more populist voice.

She ran hard on a proposal to suspend the federal gasoline tax, an idea that Obama scorned. As she battled away, Obama struggled to explain his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A Wright Jr, and his apparent inability to appeal to blue-collar voters.

Polls suggested that Democrats were starting to develop doubts about the strength of Obama’s candidacy. In short, Clinton could not have asked for a better second chance.

Yet, she was unable on Tuesday to build her base of support substantially beyond the white, working-class voters. That will not be lost on the superdelegates, the elected Democrats and party leaders who will ultimately decide this fight.

And the superdelegates are where the fight is moving: after 50 nominating contests, there are only 6 left, with just 217 pledged delegates left to be elected, not enough to get either of them over the 2,025 threshold necessary to win the nomination.

Obama’s aides said Clinton would have to win close to 70 per cent of the remaining pledged delegates and superdelegates to win the nomination, a shift in the campaign’s trajectory that would seem possible only if some big development came along to hurt Obama.

“Unfortunately for her, the math reasserts itself,” said Carter Eskew, a Democratic consultant not affiliated with either candidate. “I don’t think this changes very much of anything.”

Few States left

With few states left, Clinton and her aides said they would step up their efforts to count the disputed results in Florida and Michigan, where the states held contests in defiance of Democratic Party rules. If Clinton can win the delegates from those two states on the basis of the vote there, she could greatly reduce Obama’s lead in pledged delegates.

Still, in a sign of where the Clinton campaign is going, her aides are asserting that the winner will need 2,209 delegates, not 2,025. That higher number reflects the full inclusion of Florida and Michigan, which held their primaries before the date permitted by the Democratic Party.