As a Hoosier I find it fascinating to look at the Indiana results county by county, knowing this state much better than the talking heads on TV. I suppose they were reasonably well-prepared, but the best advice to tourists is still "Eat where the locals eat." Dan Abrams on MSNBC particularly annoyed me…

No one in Indiana was surprised when Lake County waited till midnight to report. They always want to be the kingmakers to prove how important their non-Hoosier county is, so they always wait; the mayors hold back their results till they know what all the other cities have—in case they need to find 300 more votes for their candidate. The longtime mayor of East Chicago finally got ousted for bribing voters in a concrete-pouring scandal; new sidewalks and driveways for supporters, nothing for homeowners who wouldn't trade their votes. Even the Catholic Church went along and got a new parking lot out of it. Lake County is all about bribes and corruption, which is why it isn't Hoosier at all.

Still, Lake is only 26% Black, yet Obama carried 57% of the vote; that's some White people! So what if they're in Chicago's media market? They like the guy.  

Clinton won the White rural vote downstate. She was seen as the conservative candidate. The difference in her margin in the rural counties shows a geographic split; 60-40 in the north (2-1 in my home county of Newton, one south of Lake) and up to 75-25 in southern Indiana. I suspect some of that southern support has a racist tinge, as the Clintons repeatedly played the race card. (Maybe that's true in northern rural counties too, but I hope not.)

Obama won the cities by amazing margins: Indianapolis better than 2-1. He got a lot of White votes in Marion County, which is only 26% Black. He also picked up two collar counties, Boone narrowly and rich, White, fast-growing Hamilton County 61-39. That Hamilton result stunned every Democrat in the state.

Obama won Fort Wayne, the second largest city, with 56%; it's a mostly-White city, only 12% Black, with a Republican mayor. Doesn't fit the pundits' profile; Obama in a landslide.

He dominated the big college towns (Purdue and Indiana) in Tippecanoe and Monroe; that's the youth and faculty vote joining the townies. He won South Bend, with a much smaller university (Notre Dame) and a large industrial base. He won neighboring Elkhart County, which is industrial and agricultural; Elkhart County has $121 million in assessed ag value, ranking #2 in the state.

Down south he won Switzerland County, which is 99% White, 3-1, while next-door neighbor Ohio County (98% White) went 4-1 for Clinton. I don't know anyone with an explanation for that—unless some great volunteers in Switzerland County made the difference.

Obama won rural Steuben County (98% White, Angola's the county seat) in the northeast corner 56-44, another anomaly. Yay, Steuben and Switz!

Thus world-famous Hillary Clinton won backward Indiana by 11,000 votes out of 1.26 million cast, a week after Barack Obama hit rock bottom. Not an impressive showing for the kitchen-sink strategy of the Gentlewoman from Arkansas and New York.

You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool Hoosiers all of the time. The next President of the United States is Barack Obama.++