PREVIEW: Obama-Clinton divide grows as North Carolina, Indiana loom

May 2, 2008, 1:06 GMT

Raleigh, North Carolina - Judy Fruend, a Hillary Clinton campaign volunteer, has been called a 'dead-dog Democrat' by her husband, meaning she would vote for the centre-left party's candidate even if a dead dog were nominated against the Republicans.

This year's presidential election is a different story.

'I've uttered these words: 'If the other Democrat got the nomination, I would vote for (Republican nominee) John McCain,'' Fruend says, drawing a howl of 'no' from a fellow volunteer in Clinton's local headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina.

'That was a few weeks ago,' the 62-year-old from the nearby town of Cary quickly recants, admitting she could probably never go through with the threat.

But her passion is a sign of just how divided the Democratic Party has become, as the four-month-old nomination battle between Clinton and Barack Obama hits North Carolina and Indiana, where voters go to the polls on Tuesday to express their presidential preferences.

Opinion polls show the candidates locked in a dead heat in Indiana, while Obama's once double-digit lead in North Carolina has narrowed in the last week.

With only one month of primaries left to go and time running out, Obama continues to hold a small lead in the race for the 2,024 delegates needed to capture the nomination. Obama edges Clinton 1,733 to 1,597 by the count of realclearpolitics.com.

Mathematically, Clinton has virtually no chance of catching Obama's lead in pledged delegates - those awarded directly in state primaries.

But she could still convince so-called superdelegates - party elected leaders and activists who make up one-fifth of total delegates - to put her over the top in the party's August nominating convention in Denver, Colorado.

Almost 300 superdelegates have yet to choose sides, and Democratic Party leaders have urged the undecided to make up their minds no later than the last scheduled primary on June 3.

Clinton's victory last week in Pennsylvania gave the former first lady a massive shot of momentum and motivated a huge infusion of campaign donations.

The win also quieted calls for Clinton to leave the race and planted further doubts about Obama's ability to win the most populous swing states, which will be crucial to a Democratic victory in the November general election.

Clinton on Thursday also jumped on new opinion polls suggesting she had a better chance of beating McCain, who has been free to raise money and plan his general election strategy since wrapping up the centre-right Republican Party nomination in March.

With only seven nominating contests left, each remaining primary gains significance, and both candidates have campaigned furiously in the last week across North Carolina in the South and Indiana in the Midwest.

Obama's expected victory in North Carolina - an Atlantic Coast state with a large African-American population - has made Indiana the key battleground on Tuesday.

Indiana's Democratic Party has a large contingent of working-class voters who have traditionally backed Clinton, but it also borders Obama's home state of Illinois.

'If we can win Indiana, especially after some bad press that we received over the last couple of weeks, I think we can go ahead and wrap up this nomination right here, right now,' Obama said Wednesday in a conference call with state volunteers, cited in the Tribune-Star newspaper of Terre Haute, Indiana.

Obama has suffered from the reemergence of his former Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr, who on Monday in Washington repeated some of his most racially incendiary remarks that first drew attention in March.

The new comments prompted Obama's strongest rebuke yet of the man he has credited with introducing him to the Christian faith some 20 years ago.

The continuing Democratic contest has aroused excitement among voters in states that have never before played such a crucial role in the intra-party nomination process.

'People in this state never expected it to go this far,' said Clinton spokeswoman Carly Lindauer in Raleigh, North Carolina's capital. 'Everyone is expecting that we will see a very large turnout.'

But the worry for Democrats is that such highly charged emotions could translate into fewer votes for the primary winner come November. The negative tone of the campaign in recent weeks has heightened concerns among party leaders.

In a poll last month of Pennsylvanians, nearly one quarter of Clinton supporters said they would vote for McCain in November if Obama wins the Democratic nomination, and nearly one fifth of Obama's voters said they would do the same if Clinton won.

Other Democratic voters insist that ousting President George W Bush's Republican Party from the White House should remain the overarching goal.

'I just think we need a change,' said Burt Hayward, 55, of Raleigh. 'The Democrats deserve a chance to screw it up also.'