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Barack Obama delivered a stiff setback to Hillary Clinton’s efforts to turn the tide of the Democratic race, winning the North Carolina primary by double digits Tuesday and holding Clinton to a narrow victory in Indiana.

Clinton showed no signs of letting up, but with his strong performance Obama extended his delegate and popular vote lead, and is poised to move ever closer to the nomination.

With all precincts reporting in North Carolina, Obama led Clinton 56 to 42 percent.

Together the two states were the last big contests on the primary calendar and offered the final chance for the candidates to make a serious dent in the delegate counts.

Clinton was declared the winner in Indiana more than six hours after polls closed in the state.

Vote counts were held up by Lake County, which was hand-counting 11,000 absentee ballots. Eventually returns came in showing the county trending toward Obama, an indication that he could pull out an upset in the state. The county includes the heavily black city of Gary, near Obama’s home city of Chicago. Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, an Obama supporter, predicted a shocker as the votes were being tallied, but in the end Clinton won by 2 points, 51 percent to Obama’s 49 percent.

West Virginia and five other states or territories still have contests left on the primary calendar.

A well-placed Clinton campaign source said the campaign suspected a little political sabotage in Gary, which is known for submitting its election results late.

Obama had already congratulated Clinton for what “appears to be her victory” earlier at his rally in Raleigh, N.C.

There he taunted the New York senator for saying last week that North Carolina would be a “game-changer.” Obama’s double digit lead effectively blocked Clinton from staging an election-day upset in the state.

In Indiana, Clinton’s advantage was based on groups that supported her in earlier primaries — white women, white working-class voters and rural voters.

The trend linking the New York senator with white voters with no college degree seemed to be continuing, according to exit polls. In Indiana, 65 percent of those voters went for Clinton, 34 percent for Obama. In North Carolina, 67 percent of those voters went for Clinton, 26 percent for Obama.

Clinton was winning among white men in both states, but it wasn’t enough to offset Obama’s solid support among young and black voters in North Carolina.

Obama was getting 92 percent of the black vote there. And college-educated voters were going for Obama over Clinton 55 percent to 42 percent in the state.

Polls consistently showed Obama ahead in North Carolina for weeks, but Clinton had recently closed his lead to single digits.

Obama’s campaign did not expect to win Indiana or fight Clinton to something close to a tie. The Obama camp also internally wondered if the outcome in North Carolina could be a low single-digit win or a margin of, at most, 10 points.

John McCain, virtually uncontested for the GOP presidential nomination, also won both states’ Republican primaries.

Meanwhile, huge numbers of voters streamed to the polls in both states.

Polls at a few precincts in Indiana were kept open an hour late to accommodate the long lines of voters.