This state’s tough to piece together

Straddling a shifting voting base that defies conventional labels, Indiana’s Democratic Party is a mash-up of political cultures that may prove difficult for Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to harness as they press for a definitive May 6 primary victory.

Veteran Indiana Democrats warn that the state’s complicated voting mosaic raises the prospect of another hard-fought stalemate that could fail to conclusively transform the Democratic presidential race before the party’s August convention in Denver.

“There are so many pieces to the Indiana puzzle they have to fit together,” said Robin Winston, a veteran Democratic strategist in Indianapolis and a former state party chairman. “I don’t see a stampede for either of them.”

At stake are 72 delegates, a lucrative Midwestern prize that both camps covet as the defining edge to the end of a long, bruising presidential primary season. Obama’s forces aim for a big Indiana win that would force Clinton to reassess her determination to hold out through the convention; Clinton supporters hope for a solid showing that could finally bring in superdelegate holdouts.

Clinton is mining the small southern towns and the sprawling auto plants in the central part of the state to maintain her winning Pennsylvania base among older and white rural and blue-collar voters. Obama is depending on new waves of black voters in Indianapolis and Gary and on energized student shock troops in college towns like Bloomington and West Lafayette.

But as the long presidential primary campaign has gotten mired in a weekly slugfest, some nervous Indiana Democrats have become wild cards, unsure who they will support.

“I’m on gaffe patrol now,” said Stephen Jay, an Indianapolis pulmonologist who is wavering between Obama and Clinton. As a professor of public health at Indiana University, Jay had long focused on healthcare, but now “electability” is paramount. “It’s down to which of them makes the least mistakes.”

As stressed voters grapple with their choices, Indiana’s knotty demographic mix is forcing the candidates and their burgeoning teams of operatives and volunteers to make adjustments.

Between Gary’s steel mill smokestacks to the north and the rolling terrain of southern Indiana farming towns overlooking the Ohio River, Obama and Clinton are making checkerboard moves to energize their bases while also making forays into enemy turf.

Obama spent much of midweek campaigning through the southern Indiana Democratic enclaves of Evansville and New Albany, river cities that may be his best hope in that region. Some of the Kentucky border towns were Ku Klux Klan strongholds as late as the 1920s, and despite decades of racial progress, political observers predict that some rural voters will quietly remain resistant to an African American presidential candidate.

“I expect you’ll see some voting along racial lines,” said James McDowell, a professor of political science at Indiana State University. “My guess is she’ll do well in the southern counties.”

The Democratic landscape is further complicated by the ability of Indiana independents and Republicans to cross over and vote in the May contest. Independent voters tilted to Obama in earlier primaries, giving him an edge in Southern states like Virginia and South Carolina. But those numbers could dwindle in Indiana if the controversy over Obama’s “bitter” comment about small-town America lingers.

Still, despite a brace of polls this spring that showed Clinton in command across the state, several more recent surveys, including last week’s Times Poll, gave Obama a slight edge. A SurveyUSA poll conducted between April 14 and 16 for Purdue University’s Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics gave Obama a 5-point margin -- and also showed independents “tending to support” him.

“We’re picking up some early vibes of support for Obama from independents,” said Brian Howey, a newspaper columnist and blogger who also heads a statewide political survey operation. “The big question is how deep that goes.”

Clinton swept working-class white women and scored well among white men and older voters in Pennsylvania. Hoping to repeat that performance, she is not shy about touting her heartland roots, studding her speeches with ample references to “Hoosiers” -- the nickname Indianans have been branded with for more than a century.

The New York senator, her ex-president husband and their daughter, Chelsea, have already made more than 50 visits to Indiana.

By contrast, Obama had been in the state 20 times before this week. But his ads began running on Indiana airwaves four weeks ago -- more than a week before Clinton responded with her own.

During Clinton’s appearance Wednesday in Indianapolis, she previewed the populist-tinged persona that has helped buoy her to victory in Ohio and Pennsylvania. “This campaign here in Indiana is about jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs,” she said under a giant fluttering U.S. flag in American Legion Mall, a tree-shaded city park.

At the edge of a surprisingly sparse crowd of 500, auto mechanic Bill Hughes nodded in agreement. Hughes once directed robot welders on a succession of auto assembly lines in Anderson, a hardscrabble town in Indiana’s factory belt, which stretches from Richmond to Marion. He now works in an auto yard, a victim of serial layoffs.

“Hillary’s my candidate,” he said. “She talks the talk about the economy, and you can feel that she cares.”

Clinton is expected to have the upper hand in factory towns like Anderson and Muncie, where blue-collar anger runs deep over the North American Free Trade Agreement and other, pending foreign trade deals. But the powerful United Auto Workers union has held off from an endorsement.

Most of the state’s top Democratic officials, from Sen. Evan Bayh on down, back Clinton, giving her “the Cadillac organization on the Democratic side,” Howey said. Obama has the support of former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, who has done a radio ad and is expected to campaign around Evansville, his former congressional base.

Clinton’s toughest challenge is farther upstate, where new registration has soared among students in college towns like Bloomington, home of Indiana University. Overall, the state’s voter totals have grown by 150,000 this year, officials reported.

“Obama’s played Bloomington like a violin,” said Rob Stone, an emergency room physician. “Last summer, his people put out a table at the local farmers market, and they’ve been showing up every weekend.”

Clinton also faces surging first-time registration in black wards in Indianapolis and Gary, where Obama is counting on local leaders’ backing.

“We’re solid for Barack,” said Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, who promises his organization will turn out “a tidal wave” for the primary. Clay’s inner-city patronage troops are one of the few viable political machines left in Indiana, and he plans to spring a legion of precinct workers to shoo voters to the polls.

“We’ve got precinct people checking off names at the polls and everybody that did not vote by 2 p.m., we’re going to their homes and knock on their doors,” Clay vowed.

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stephen.braun@latimes.com