Sen. Barack Obama has a huge lead among younger voters in Indiana, Sen. Hillary Clinton holds the same lead with voters older than 60, and both candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination will have a tough race ahead of them in the Hoosier state.

Those are just a few of the indications in a poll commissioned by WSBT-TV, The Tribune, WISH-TV in Indianapolis and WANE-TV in Fort Wayne.

In a sample of 400 likely Democratic primary voters, Clinton would reap 49 percent of the vote and Obama would earn 46 percent of the vote if the election were held today.


But that’s within the poll’s 5 percent margin of error.

In other words, the Indiana primary is anybody’s ball game right now, said Del Ali of the Rockville, Md.-based Research 2000, which conducted the poll.

The winner, Ali said, will depend on a variety of factors, including the candidates’ abilities to hold on to certain demographic groups.

Obama has a solid lead (63 percent to 36 percent) among respondents age 18 to 29.

Clinton, meanwhile, holds 60 percent of respondents older than 60 years old, to Obama’s 34 percent.

And Clinton holds a seven-point lead over Obama among voters age 30 to 44, and a six-point lead with voters age 45 to 59.

Those are advantages she needs to grow for an Indiana victory, Ali said.

“If she does very well in that age group, I think she probably wins the primary,” he said.

An Obama victory, meanwhile, could depend on his ability to hold onto black voters. In the survey, 81 percent of black voters said they will support Obama, to Clinton’s 16 percent.

Black voters made up 12 percent of the survey. African Americans make up 8.9 percent of Indiana’s population, according to state data.

“If they’re going to be 12 percent-plus coming out in this primary, and he’s holding over 80 (percent), he could pull this thing out,” Ali said.