Obama had been under fire for controversial remarks made by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and was not initially expected to do well in Indiana, a state with similar demographics to Ohio and Pennsylvania, so pulling out a narrow loss was perceived as successful by the media.

Further hurting Clinton's campaign was the time-zone difference; her double-digit defeat in North Carolina was reported in prime time, and the news of the slim victory in Indiana had come too late.

"[13] Hillary Rodham Clinton's narrow win in the Indiana Democratic primary can be traced to a number of factors.

Obama's active campaigning in Indiana during the primary is widely believed to be a cause of his narrow win in this heavily Republican state in the 2008 general election against John McCain.

On April 3, 2012, four St. Joseph County Democratic officials had charges filed against them for allegedly forging Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton primary petitions during the 2008 election.

Authorities charged that the scheme to submit the fake petitions for Obama was put together at the local county Democratic headquarters.

Indiana elections officials said that in St. Joseph County, which is the 2nd Congressional District, the Obama campaign qualified with 534 signatures; Clinton's camp had 704.

If the number of legitimate signatures for Obama or Clinton had been challenged and had fallen below the legal requirement of 500, they could have been removed from the state ballot.

Reports previously put the number of phony signatures for both candidates at about 150, but state investigators plucked names from the petitions at random and cited only 20 individual alleged forgeries as part of their case.