I think this all comes down to which candidate can snag John Mellencamp.

Could also be his support of ehtanol as an alternative fuel source.  Farm belt = corn = ethanol = money.

Then there's the most obvious factor: Indiana is a solidly red state, unlike its neighbors in the true blue Illinois and swing Ohio. Most of the redder states, especially those that are more northern, go for him. Now, I don't know exactly why THAT is, but that's what made me think Obama had Indiana when the poll back in February had him ahead. The more recent polls, of course, tell a different story. CW says that endorsements don't matter but could Bayh be a factor here?

and Illinois is a neighbor, the ad buys he has had going on for years, such as when he ran for Senate, probably let a lot of Indianans feel more familiar with him.

tnr1.com makes an interesting point about the Ohio results, and I checked it out.  Those claims don't really hold up - Obama scored well above his overall state average near the Michigan border and in the rust belt areas of Dayton and Toledo.  In fact, the biggest pattern (aside from Obama taking the cities with big black populations) is that Obama's support follows a gradient from southeast to northwest.  The further away from Appalachia he goes he does better.  I'm not sure what that means, but my first guess is that rather than a farm belt-rust belt division, it's more of the ethnic division Noam mentions as well as a cultural effect.  Hill country people just don't like him.

Not sure what to make of it, but some demographic/political factors to consider:

1.  Evan Bayh is beloved in Indiana and is an endorsement that could matter more than CW would think.

2.  The African American and Latino populations of Indiana are much larger than most people realize, although they are concentrated in Indianapolis and the Chicagoland region.

3.  Indiana politics tend to split on a north/south axis.  The northern part of the state mostly settled by New Englanders, the southern part of the state by folks coming from the south (such as Abe Lincoln's family, which made a brief stop in Indiana after leaving KY and before settling in IL).  North remains more rustbelt, south more farmbelt.  Farms in northern part of the state larger and corporate owned.  Southern Indiana (like southern Illinois and SW Ohio) has a reputation for being less, um, racially enlightened.

4.  Indianapolis is more like a sunbelt city than a rustbelt city.  Young population, more affluent than most other midwestern cities, more educated owing to being center of pharm industry and regional center for banking and insurance.  Some of its suburbs are among fastest growing counties in U.S.  Probably more Obama-friendly.  Almost 1/3 of state population is Indy metro area.

5.  State outside of Indy is losing populaton/jobs and likely to go for anti-NAFTA demagoguery should either candidate play that card, as they did in Ohio.      

I'm from Chicago, and went to college in Ohio (long ago), but it is my impression that Indiana is a bit more like Illinois than Ohio.  

Check out the maps at politics.nytimes.com/.../index.html  for the contrast between the two states bordering Indiana.  In Ohio Obama only got the urban areas, in Illinois he got much of the semi and very rural areas.

As an amateur student of the Civil War, etc. I can say that Southern Illinois as well as Indiana were and somewhat continue to be "Dixielandish(?)".

Northwest Indiana, especially, by virtue of being a Chicago media market, has had more exposure to Obama, and from what I have seen in this campaign, the better they Know Barack, the better they like him.

Familiarity breeds approval for Obama.

-

Good lord, you guys really need to get out of the beltway and get to know your country better. For starters, Indiana was a bastion of the Klan in the 20s and 30s. It remains the most culturally conservative of all the midwest states. Politically it's about as red as the midwest gets. This is Dan Quayle country.

Also, Indiana is not part of the "farm belt." It's affiliated with the auto and what's left of the steel industries. Like the rest of the industrial midwest, its working class population consists mainly of transplanted southerners, both black and white, who made the great migration in the first half of the 20c. It has more in common with redneck Missouri than with progressive Minnesota or Wisconsin.

Tep. I would have agreed with that assessment 30-40 years ago. As it is kbower has a pretty good fix on Indiana. That is not to say it isn't a relatively very conservative region. It's not unlike a vibrant 1950's environment with technology an important adjunct to the Indie 500. Indianapolis is a highly educated gathering these days. Very progressive in many ways. But the flag does, indeed, fly.

Man. Those guys love to race on the highway. Still they'll leave you room to operate unmolested. Unlike Wisconsin where they happily cut you off. In fact that is their intention. Indiana has much better manners even if they do drive like bats out of hell. Not that I've ever taken up the challenge........

As per Scots-Irish please allow that those among my clan were evenly split in allegiances during the Civil War. There was a northern migration which went Pennsylvania-Ohio in addition to the widely known Appalachian. I think the Scots-Irish thing is widely misunderstood by outsiders as being some sort of marker for bigotry. I'd say it's a bit more likely that Obama would garner support among the faithful if he were a bit more forward and a touch of Don't Tread On Me. Is it a wonder that so many of our presidents have Scots-Irish descent? They are happy to fight any enemies of their convictions. Might even prefer it to an extent. Prove it out if you will. Folks are attracted to somebody who knows what they believe and are willing to put it all on the line.