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There was a certain feel to Sen. Barack Obama’s speech last night in Raleigh, N.C. He didn’t win both Indiana and North Carolina last night, but he sure sounded like he did.
More than in past speeches Senator Obama talked like a presidential nominee. He thanked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for putting up a good fight, and then took on the man who is likely to be his rival in the fall: Sen. John McCain.
Clearly, the thinking was that his 14-point victory in North Carolina was overwhelming and that the squeaker loss in Indiana was close enough. He advanced his lead in pledged delegates. He advanced his popular vote advantage. His nomination became all but certain.
The results, when viewed through the prism of the Patchwork Nation map, do show some reason for optimism in the Obama camp. He won in some important places last night, particularly in Indiana, and he has made some inroads in areas that had been Senator Clinton’s core constituency.
Obama won a big “Emptying Nest” county (Allen), a community with a large share of older voters. He won a few “Monied ’Burbs” counties immediately around Indianapolis (Boon and Hamilton) that are well above 90 percent white. He also won an “Immigration Nation” county (Elkhart), which has a good-size Hispanic population.
He won those places he had to win, too. We wrote last week that the three counties Patchwork Nation classified as “Industrial Metropolis” (Marion, Lake, and St. Joseph, the respective homes of Indianapolis, Gary, and South Bend) were crucial for him. Last night, he carried all of them.
Perhaps just as important were the close margins by which he lost in “Emptying Nests,” which have been reliably in Clinton’s corner throughout this primary season. Although these counties were with her again, in Benton County, Montgomery County, and LaPorte County, her margin of victory was within 6 percentage points.

csmonitor.com

Tags: indiana, population