North Carolina and Indiana vote

Commentators and pundits will try to tell you that today's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana will make or break the candidacies of one or both of the Democratic challengers. Don't believe them. No matter what happens today in either state, no one is going to be dropping out of the race anytime soon. However, depending on the outcomes of today's primaries, the momentum of the race could change significantly. Here's the breakdown of today's possible outcomes and their potential impacts on the Clinton and Obama campaigns:

Most likely outcome: Clinton wins IN by narrow margin (1-5 points); Obama wins NC by medium margin (5-10 points)

This is what I would expect to happen based on the polling data through today. Clinton and Obama are polling in a statistical dead heat in IN, but I think blue collar voters will help her win narrowly there. Helped along by African American voters, Obama continues to poll well in NC; unless the Jeremiah Wright controversy has had a bigger impact than we know, I expect he will still pull out a win here. A one-and-one showing today will make no discernible impact on either campaign although the pressure will be on Clinton to do well in the other upcoming contests. Otherwise, however, it will mean a wait-and-see until next Tuesday.

But what if: Obama wins IN by narrow margin and NC by medium margin

Again, this wouldn't put Clinton totally out of the race. Her campaign is clearly prepared to hold on at least until early June. However, if Obama could pull out a win in both states, it would be a signal to the country that the Jeremiah Wright flap and Bittergate have more than blown over and that his campaign has weathered those storms. This would probably be enough for most of the undecided superdelegates to firmly place their support behind him; they could argue that his ability to get past these two tests of his candidacy meant that he had now been battle-tested and ready to face McCain in November. Expect Clinton to end her run at the White House no later than June 15th. The race is too close in IN for Obama to pull out a huge margin of victory there. However, if he only narrowly wins NC, he leaves the door cracked for Clinton who could rightfully point out that his numbers plummeted there over the last several weeks.

But what if: Clinton wins IN by any margin and NC by any margin

Clinton has the upper hand here; if she could pull out wins in both IN and NC by any margin of victory, it would be a huge boost to her campaign. Although it wouldn't do much to the delegate math, it could put her in a position to surpass Obama in the popular vote and I think enough superdelegates have been hinting that the popular vote should be the decider of victory in this primary that it could mean a huge windfall for Clinton's chances of securing the nomination. It's a HUGE long shot; but if she can pull it off, I think there's better than a 50% chance she could best Obama and become the nominee at the convention. It would certainly justify her hanging on that long.

We'll see how things go and I'll give a primary recap tomorrow.