Indiana outcome still uncertain

Indiana voters split nearly down the middle in what was perhaps the closest race in the nation between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Obama was close to snapping Indiana’s streak of backing Republican presidential nominees for 10 straight elections, but counting continued late Tuesday as unofficial vote tallies by The Associated Press showed him holding a lead of about 8,000 votes out of some 2.6 million cast.

The narrow race came after Obama ran an unprecedented campaign in the state by spending millions of dollars in advertising and manpower that Republicans were unable to match on McCain’s behalf.

Statewide polls taken in late October showed Obama and McCain in a dead heat, and Obama said during a campaign stop Tuesday in Indianapolis that the race was “tight as a tick.”

McCain won many rural counties across the state with 60 percent or more of the vote, but Obama offset that with big margins in many of the state’s largest counties, including Marion, St. Joseph and Lake, a Democratic stronghold next to Obama’s hometown of Chicago.

Obama kept up his push for the state’s 11 electoral votes as he flew to Indianapolis Tuesday morning to surprise some voters with a round of last-minute phone calls in his ninth Indiana stop since mid-July.

He spent about 45 minutes at a United Auto Workers hall, where campaign workers were making calls to voters, and spoke on about a dozen calls.

“It’s going to be tight as a tick here in Indiana,” Obama told volunteers at the center. “So the question is who wants it more.”

McCain acknowledged as voters were going to the polls that Indiana was no longer a lock for the GOP.

“I think there have been a lot of changes in Indiana, there’s obviously economic difficulties,” he told Indianapolis TV station WTHR in a noontime satellite interview from Arizona.

Obama’s campaign made Indiana an unexpected target for the general election soon after his narrow loss to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the state’s May primary, a hard-fought race that saw both candidates make dozens of stops and build extensive organizations.

“The key for us was his commitment to keep that organizing going all summer and to keep the momentum from that later primary and build on that grassroots effort,” said former Fort Wayne Mayor Graham Richard, a Democrat who supported Obama during the primary.

Republicans celebrated Gov. Mitch Daniels’ re-election and hoped for McCain to hold onto Indiana.

“It is awfully close and we certainly understand that Barack Obama had a lot more money to spend here and all that, but at the same time it is about winning and they won,” said Luke Messer, the co-chairman of McCain’s Indiana campaign, after Obama was elected president.

Tuesday’s tight race came just four years after President Bush carried Indiana with 60 percent of the vote. Lyndon Johnson’s victory in Indiana during his 1964 landslide win over Barry Goldwater was the last time a Democratic nominee had carried the state.