Split decisions point up November challenges for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

Results from today’s Democratic presidential primaries in North Carolina and Indiana highlight key challenges that either Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton would face in a November race against Republican John McCain.

Obama swept to a landslide victory in North Carolina, while early returns from Indiana showed Clinton with a narrowing single-digit lead.

Fitting the pattern set in previous Democratic nominating contests, Obama fell short in Indiana among white blue-collar voters, according to exit polls conducted for television networks and the Associated Press. In North Carolina, Clinton fared poorly among African Americans.

In Obama’s case, the battle in November for white working-class voters in the Midwest – including Ohio, Indiana’s eastern neighbor – would be crucial for the Illinois senator to capture enough states to win the presidency.

For Clinton, it could be a struggle in the general election to ensure a strong turnout of African Americans, the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituency. Some black voters could prove reluctant to cast ballots for the New York senator who – along with her husband, former President Clinton – has at times used controversial tactics to thwart Obama’s quest to become the first African American president.

Still, whatever challenge each Democrat would face in winning over the supporters of the other – and it could be significant after the nomination marathon – pollsters caution that voting patterns in a primary rarely foreshadow the dynamics of a general election.

In a fall race against McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, the primaries will be, in political terms, a distant memory. And either Democrat would offer clear contrasts with the Arizona senator on the economy, the Iraq war and healthcare, among other issues.

“There’s been no real head-on debate with McCain yet in a focused way about the differences between Democrats and Republicans on real issues,” said Joseph E. Lowndes, a political scientist at the University of Oregon. “Those choices are going to look much starker in November.”

The results tonight suggested that the stalemate in the Democratic nominating battle could continue for four more weeks, with contests still ahead in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota.

“There is nothing to end the race before June 3 – nothing,” said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Going into North Carolina and Indiana, Obama led with 1,745.5 delegates to 1,608 for Clinton, according to the Associated Press. It takes 2,024 delegates to win the nomination. The final results in North Carolina and Indiana will likely have little impact on the margin between Obama and Clinton.

Barring a landslide shift toward one candidate or the other, the remaining contests will also do little to adjust the margin. Because of this, about 260 undecided superdelegates, a group of party and elected officials, would be left to settle the nomination.

 michael.finnegan@latimes.com