Washington, May 7 : Former U. S. First Lady Hillary Clinton narrowly won the Indiana primary election on Tuesday night.

Clinton claimed a 51 percent to 49 percent victory in Indiana, a margin of just 22,000 votes statewide out of 1.2 million votes cast. The result was badly delayed due to the extremely slow counting of votes in Lake County, located near her Democratic rival Barack Obama's home city of Chicago.

This win will give Clinton two more delegates in the race.

Signaling her determination to fight on in the race, the New York Senator told her supporters in Indianapolis, “Thanks to you, it's full speed onto the White House."

With just a handful of states remaining to vote, Clinton's path to overtaking Obama in either pledged delegates or the popular votes has grown even narrower.

The campaign between the two Democratic contenders has already been on for more than 16 months and across 50 states.

Obama won at least 94 delegates and Clinton at least 75 in the two states combined, with 18 still to be awarded.

There are 217 delegates at stake in the six primaries yet to come. Another 270 superdelegates remain uncommitted.

Despite Obama’s loss in Indiana, North Carolina gave a decisive win to him early on Tuesday with 57 percent of the state’s vote going in his favour. After his NC win, Obama declared that he was closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination. (ANI)