Barack Obama took a big step toward the Democratic presidential nomination with an easy victory in North Carolina, and Hillary Clinton narrowly won Indiana and loaned $6.4 million out of her own pocket to help keep her struggling campaign alive.
The outcome of yesterday's primaries helped Mr Obama widen his lead over Ms Clinton in the grueling Democratic duel for the right to face Republican John McCain in November's presidential election with just six nominating contests remaining.
A Clinton campaign source said she loaned $6.4 million to her campaign in the past month. It was the second time she has had to dip into her personal fortune to fund her struggling presidential bid.
Both candidates looked ahead to contests in West Virginia on May 13th and in Oregon and Kentucky a week later, but Ms Clinton is nearly out of opportunities to change the course of the race.
"We have seen that it's possible to overcome the politics of division and distraction, that it's possible to overcome the same old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems," Mr Obama said at a victory rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Illinois senator's 14-point victory in North Carolina was a dramatic comeback from a difficult campaign stretch that began last month with a big loss in Pennsylvania and was prolonged by the controversy over racially charged comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The results meant Ms Clinton missed her best chance to narrow Obama's lead in pledged delegates who will help pick the nominee at the Democratic Party's August convention.
Ms Clinton won Indiana by fewer than 23,000 votes out of more than 1.25 million cast, taking the state by 51 to 49 per cent. She had hoped to win the state by a bigger margin but vowed to keep up the fight.
"It's full speed on to the White House," the New York senator said at a victory rally in Indianapolis, with her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, standing behind her. "We've got a long road ahead but we're going to keep fighting."
The 60-year-old former first lady, who would be the country's first woman president, asked the Indianapolis crowd for donations to keep alive her campaign, which has been heavily outspent by Mr Obama.
An MSNBC count showed Mr Obama expanded his delegate edge by a net of nine in the two states. Mr Obama now has 1,876 total delegates to Mrs Clinton's 1,729, still short of the 2,025 needed to secure the nomination.
But neither candidate can win without help from superdelegates - nearly 800 party insiders and officials who are free to back any candidate - and the results last night undermined Mrs Clinton's argument that she is the candidate with the best chance to beat Mr McCain in November.
With just 217 delegates at stake in the last six contests, Ms Clinton has no realistic chance to overtake Mr Obama's lead in pledged delegates or in popular votes won in the state-by-state battle for the nomination that began in January.
She still hopes to find a way to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida, where she won contests in January that are not recognized by the national party because of a dispute over when they were held.