Hillary Rodham Clinton is gaining ground on front-runner Barack Obama in Indiana and North Carolina, where voters will cast Democratic primary votes next week, two new polls show.
In the Tar Heel State, the double-digit lead Obama has held over Clinton slipped to 5 points in a new SurveyUSA poll, which showed Obama at 49 percent and Clinton at 44 percent.
In Indiana, a Public Policy Polling survey showed Clinton is leading Obama, 50 percent to 42 percent. But in a sign of how hard it is to read the race there, a Howey-Gauge Poll that came out yesterday had a different result – showing Obama ahead, 47 percent to 45 percent. About 8 percent hadn’t made up their minds.
The movement in the two May 6 primary states comes on the heels of a week in which Obama was dogged by claims he has trouble with working-class, white voters after he lost Pennsylvania.
In the SurveyUSA poll in North Carolina, Clinton is leading Obama among white voters by 31 points, while trailing him massively among black voters.
The Indiana poll also shows Clinton ahead with her core support of white, older and women voters – but that poll shows her getting 21 percent of black votes, which is far higher than she’s received in some recent primaries.
Meanwhile, an AP-Yahoo poll of the same group of 2,000 voters it’s tracked since last November showed that negative feelings are growing on both sides of the Democratic divide. Anti-Clinton sentiment among Obama supporters is up to 44 percent, up from the 35 percent mark in November.