Sen. Barack Obama has built a 5 percentage-point lead among Indiana voters over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination for president, according to a poll released Friday.The poll, by the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, showed Obama leading Clinton 50 percent to 45 percent, with 5 percent undecided.
No Democratic presidential nominee has carried Indiana since Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1964, and the poll showed that either Obama or Clinton would have an uphill battle against the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain.
McCain led Obama 51 percent to 44 percent and led Clinton 53 percent to 42 percent, with 5 percent undecided in each case.
Okay, all that is well and good and very interesting but here is a bit of shocker:
Combine that with Backing from Bayh is key for Clinton from The Indianapolis Star and I have to wonder how long are Senator Bayh's coattails.The poll also found that if Clinton picked Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana as her running mate, it wouldn't help much.
"Only 4 percent of Hoosiers would switch from McCain to Clinton if Bayh were chosen as her running mate, and some of this gain would be lost by the 2 percent of Clinton supporters who would switch to McCain," the Downs Center said in its analysis of the results.
Sabato said Bayh's support for Clinton is as important in Indiana as Gov. Ted Strickland's was in Ohio, which Clinton won, and Gov. Ed Rendell's in Pennsylvania, which votes Tuesday.
And winning Indiana, he said, is essential to Clinton.
"If she's going to upset Obama at this point, she has to almost run the table," Sabato said. "Indiana is probably the closest of the remaining primaries. She has to win it. Neither side has a clear edge there."
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