Click Here

      *According to the Associated Press, Barack Obama has won the North Carolina presidential primary, but Hillary Rodham Clinton is declared the victor in Indiana by CBS.

      The two states are the last big-delegate prizes left in the long race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

      The Associated Press made its North Carolina call Tuesday night based on surveys of voters as they left the polls.

      Clinton stepped ahead of Obama in the Indiana primary on Tuesday and the two rivals battled across North Carolina, the last big-delegate prizes left in their long race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

      The economy was the top issue by far in both states, according to interviews with voters as they left their polling places.

      Returns from the first 10 percent of Indiana precincts showed Clinton with 58 percent of the vote, to 42 percent for Obama.

      Indiana was a virtual must-win state for the former first lady, who was hoping to counter Obama's delegate advantage with a strong run through the late primaries.

      She called North Carolina a potential game-changer — if she could deny Obama a victory in the final Southern state to vote. An estimated one-third of all ballots there were cast by blacks.

      Indiana exit polls charted a racial divide that has become familiar in a long, historic campaign pitting a black man against a white woman.

      Obama was gaining more than 90 percent of the black vote in Indiana, while Clinton was winning an estimated 61 percent of the white vote, running ahead of her rival among white men as well as women.

      She also had 51 percent of independents, to 49 for her rival, a statistical tie, and was winning among Democrats, 53-47.

      Voters in both states were divided evenly when asked whether the controversy surrounding Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was a factor in their decisions.

      In Indiana, about one in five voters said they were independents, an additional one in 10 said Republican.

      Only Democrats and unaffiliated voters were permitted to vote in North Carolina.

      For MORE, go here.