(CNN) - The action is clearly on the Democratic side, but Republicans also held primaries in Indiana and North Carolina Tuesday.
Despite being his party's presumptive nominee for nearly three months, roughly a quarter of Republicans in North Carolina and Indiana showed up to vote against the Arizona senator.
With nearly all precincts reporting, McCain won 74 percent of the vote in North Carolina. Mike Huckabee, who dropped out of the race two months ago, scored 12 percent. Ron Paul, who never quite officially ended his White House bid, registered 7 percent, and Mitt Romney got 5 percents.
The story was only slightly better for McCain in Indiana. There he scored 77 percent of the vote, while Huckabee registered 12 percent, and Paul garnered 7 percent. Nearly 5 percent of North Carolina voters said they did not have a preference.
McCain faced similar results in the Pennsylvania primary two weeks ago - the first contest after Huckabee officially dropped out of the race. There the party's presumptive presidential nominee won only 73 percent of the vote.
Is this a troubling sign for McCain, who has long faced resistance from the conservative wing of his party?
Not likely.
Then-Gov. George W. Bush faced similar results, though slightly better, in these three states long after he was the clear nominee in 2000. In North Carolina, he won 78 percent of the vote, in Indiana he got 81 percent, and in Pennsylvania he won 73 percent of the vote.
Watch a clip of Sen. Clinton's speech Tuesday night in Indiana.
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (CNN) - Hillary Clinton claimed victory Tuesday in the Indiana Democratic presidential primary, but pledged to work for the eventual Democratic nominee "no matter what happens."
CNN has not projected a winner in Indiana because the race between Clinton and rival Barack Obama, who won Tuesday's North Carolina primary, remains tight.
"We know how desperately people want to see a change, and it will not be a change if the Republicans keep the White House," the New York senator said. "It will be more of the same - something that no one, no matter what political party you may be, can afford."
Watch CNN Political Researcher Alan Silverleib on Tuesday's exit polls.
(CNN) - Watch CNN Political Research Alan Silverleib as he speaks with CNN.com's Melissa Long and gives a historical perspective to Tuesday's exit polling data.
(CNN) - Hillary Clinton leads in Indiana by four points, 52-48. But heavily-Democratic Lake County has yet to report in. It’s home to one of the state’s largest cities, Gary – and a major bloc of African-American voters.
Lake County officials have said they are waiting to count all 11,370 absentee ballots before reporting results – but that’s just about all they’re saying.
“We have called a couple of times unsuccessfully,” Pam Potesta, Democratic co-director of the Election Division in the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office, told CNN Tuesday evening. “There was no answer. We haven’t heard anything. I don’t want to assume they are having problems, but they are a large county. One thing they have against them, if you want to call it that, is they had an extra hour because of the time change.”
Potesta added that “it is not uncommon” for larger counties to take a little longer in reporting their results.
(CNN) – Why did Barack Obama do so much better among white women in Indiana? He won two out of five, after winning fewer than a third of that group in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Could it be that Hillary Clinton’s increasingly tough persona – the ‘Annie Oakley’ factor, as Barack Obama dubbed it – is costing her among the women voters who have been her base throughout the primary season?
(CNN)–The spin wars are heating up.
Tonight won’t do much to change the delegate gap, say Barack Obama’s senior aides – and any day they break even makes it that much tougher for Clinton to make up the shortfall.
"We think we won a really big victory here tonight - it insures that regardless of what happens in Indiana that we are going to extend our delegate lead," senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters. "We have taken another big step down the road here… The important thing is that this was not a game changer, folks, in any way, shape or form."
Earlier in the week, Clinton had said a win in North Carolina could be a “game changer.”
But Deputy Communications Director Phil Singer reminded reporters that Barack Obama had said that Indiana might be the “tiebreaker,” given Clinton’s victory in Pennsylvania and his expected win in North Carolina.
Indiana may not be in the win column at this point in the evening, but they say the exit polls out of both states Tuesday night have bolstered their electability argument: they show Obama’s supporters are more likely to support Clinton in the fall than vice versa.
At the heart of their thinking: Florida and Michigan. Together with Ohio, says the Clinton team, those three states are vital to any Democratic win – and the New York senator has claimed all three.
RALEIGH, North Carolina (CNN) – Barack Obama celebrated a clear victory in North Carolina's Democratic primary Tuesday, congratulating Hillary Clinton for her apparent win in Indiana while dismissing pundits who say the Democrats are hopelessly divided between the two.
"This fall, we intend to march forward as one Democratic party, united by a common vision for this country, because we all agree at this defining moment in our history - a moment when we are facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril, a dream that feels like it's slipping away for too many americans. We can't afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush's third term," the Illinois senator told supporters. "We need change in America."
Related video: Obama: We're close to the nomination
(CNN) – Who you backed in Indiana seems to have been based, to some extent, on your birthday – a fact that’s working in Hillary Clinton’s favor.
Voters in most age groups were almost evenly split – except for the youngest and oldest voters.
Sixty-three percent of voters under age 24 backed Barack Obama. But twice as many seniors went to the polls – and 72 percent of them voted for Clinton.
In North Carolina, Obama won young voters 70 to 28 percent, and lost the senior vote to Clinton – but her advantage, though still significant, came by a slightly smaller margin: 57 to 39 percent. Limiting his losses among older voters was a big factor in his win.
(CNN) – Gender gap? What gender gap?
Indiana’s Democratic primary vote was not dramatically divided along gender lines. Men split their votes almost evenly between Clinton and Obama, 51 to 49 percent. Women still gave the edge to Hillary Clinton – but by only six points, 53 to 47 percent.
There was little sign of a split between the sexes in North Carolina either: 57 percent of the state’s men cast their votes for Barack Obama – but so did 54 percent of women voters.
Watch Wolf Blitzer tally the popular vote so far in the Democratic race.
(CNN) - Watch Wolf Blitzer explain three different ways to count the popular vote so far in the Democratic nomination race.
From CNN Politics
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