In North Carolina, where he once led by as much as 11%, the latest polls show Barack Obama leading by 7 to 9%, with one poll actually showing Hillary Clinton leading by 1%. All things considered, Obama should win this one, but not by as large a margin as was once being predicted. The story in Indiana will be different.

North Carolina has 169 delegates at stake. Obama will not get all of them because of the way the Democrats distribute the delegates (proportionally in relation to the popular vote), but regardless of the margin of his victory his pledged delegate lead will increase. The question is will he get enough delegates to overcome what I predict will be a Hillary Clinton victory in Indiana, where there are 84 delegates at stake. It depends on how much of a victory Clinton has in Indiana, but Obama should come out ahead at the end of the day. Even if Clinton wins by a larger margin in Indiana than Obama does in North Carolina, there is too much of a disparity in the number of delegates.

There is still a day to go and anything can happen in politics in 24 hours, so this may change before then. There are still a good number of voters who have not made up their minds at this late date-8% in each state. One other question is whether or not Hillary Clinton will withdraw from the race if she does not make up ground this Tuesday. I predict she will not, basically because of West Virginia on the 13th and Kentucky on the 20th. In West Virginia, she leads by close to 39% in the latest polls (which are not current), where there are 86 delegates at stake. In Kentucky, she leads by more than 30% with 60 delegates at stake. After Tuesday, there is a total of 7 more primaries to go. And polls still have to be taken there, so it is not possible to predict how they will go. But, as I have said before, this will most likely go to the convention without a nominee. And in the case of a deadlocked convention, anything can happen, including a compromise candidate. Talk was circulating around a couple of months ago of Al Gore being that person, but this is all speculation. There are a lot of what if’s about the Democratic nomination this time around and it does not look like any of them will be going away anytime soon.