Did Rush Limbaugh Tilt Result In Indiana?

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Democrats Split Indiana and North Carolina

Sen. Barack Obama won North Carolina's presidential primary by a wide margin Tuesday, while Sen. Hillary Clinton narrowly won in Indiana.

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And Clinton's edge among Indiana Republicans was relatively small, if set against the broader racial divisions in the contest. Her eight-point advantage among Republicans, nearly all of whom are white in the state, was much narrower than it was among white Democrats, whom she won by nearly 2 to 1 over Obama.

Edward Carmines, a political scientist at Indiana University, said that he concluded from the data that while Operation Chaos "existed to some extent, I don't think it was a major factor."

Indiana defied easy analysis from the start, having not held a competitive Democratic presidential primary in decades. Clinton had a demographic edge, with the state's low proportion of black voters and its mix of Rust Belt workers, farmers and Southern transplants. Obama's primary advantage was that he hailed from next door, and many voters were familiar with him.

The Clinton campaign credited its narrow win to the organization of Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.) and the more than 100 campaign stops made by Clinton and her husband and daughter. Robby Mook, Clinton's Indiana director, said she did better than expected in Indianapolis and in northwestern Indiana, where Obama was expected to benefit from his exposure on Chicago television.

But he fared better than the final polls predicted by cutting into Clinton's huge margin among several key groups in Ohio and Pennsylvania, such as white women and white voters without college degrees. He racked up big totals in college towns and with African American voters in Gary and Indianapolis, as expected. But he also won by 22 points in Hamilton County, an affluent Republican-leaning suburb north of Indianapolis; by 12 points in the county that includes Fort Wayne, after losing similar Rust Belt cities elsewhere; and lost by only four points in Evansville, on the southern border.

The Obama campaign attributed these successes to having placed the candidate in smaller venues and more personal gatherings -- a horse barn, senior center, steel mill, a farmer's back yard -- where he sought to be seen less as a political star than a thoughtful listener. Mitch Stewart, Obama's Indiana director, pointed in particular to Elkhart County, a Republican-leaning community east of South Bend, where the candidate did some canvassing and ended up winning by 18 points.

It made the difference for Jim Ballard, 41, an Elkhart police officer who did not make up his mind until last week.

"Barack seems to be hitting the smaller towns and talking to the people. And he makes you feel like you're part of the process," he said as he climbed on his Harley-Davidson in Granger. "One of the things that was said was he looked people in the eye and Hillary didn't. That's big for me, as a police officer. "

Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.