INDIANAPOLIS -- In its state motto, Indiana proclaims itself the "Crossroads of the Nation," but there's plenty of competition for that title.

Omaha, Neb., makes the same official boast, as do Chicago Heights, Ill., Strongsville, Ohio, and Wentzville, Mo. Even within the Hoosier State, the designation is in dispute. In Terre Haute, where Route 40 and Route 41 meet at the intersection of Seventh and Wabash, there's a modest plaque with that immodest boast. A few miles north, Schererville makes the same claim, pointing to its intersection of Route 30 and Route 41.

For the last two weeks, however, there's been little dispute that Indiana, where Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been running neck and neck for weeks, has become the crossroads of this defiantly improbable Democratic presidential primary campaign.

The question is, which way will voters turn?

If they turn to Mr. Obama, it will make it that much more difficult for Mrs. Clinton to press her electability argument to the superdelegates who control her only path to the nomination -- despite her string of big-state wins capped by Pennsylvania.

But if Mrs. Clinton wins, particularly if she can twin it with an unexpectedly strong showing in North Carolina on the same day, a candidacy that once seemed doomed will have more time and rhetorical ammunition to claw its way to the nomination.

Mrs. Clinton was all smiles this past week as she toured Miller Veneers, a family- owned company that since the Great Depression has turned logs into thin sheets that lend a real wood look to products ranging from plywood to car dashboards.

The plant visit suggested some of the potential advantages for Mrs. Clinton here. While it's lost thousands of jobs in steel and automobile-related businesses, Indiana retains a greater reliance on manufacturing employment than most states. Exit poll data from earlier contests suggest that blue-collar workers are a hospitable constituency for the New York senator.

Some of the employees watching the tour wore light blue T-shirts with the logo of the International Association of Machinists and the slogan, "Counting on Hillary."

The labor movement here, as in the nation, is split in this race. Neither the United Auto Workers, nor the United Steelworkers have made endorsements.

"I wish [former North Carolina Sen.] John Edwards was still in it,'' said Markeya McDaniel Wilkerson, an Indianapolis member of the United Steelworkers. She said her fellow USW members were deeply divided between the remaining Democrats.

The nation's two largest non-industrial unions continue to be at odds this contest. Service Employees International Union is spending an estimated $500,000 in pro-Obama ads, while the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has helped fund an independent group reported to be on track to spending more than $1 million in pro-Clinton spots.

The state also has many rural communities similar to those that overwhelmingly supported Mrs. Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Mr. Obama has potential advantages as well. Like Iowa, the site of his breakthrough caucus victory in January, Indiana flanks Illinois, so that many voters here were acquainted with him even before the presidential race.

The Northwest corner, including the 1st Congressional District, is part of the Chicago media market. The Almanac of American Politics points out that the football fans of this region root for Mr. Obama's Bears rather than the Indianapolis Colts.

Mr. Obama is hoping for the support of many Colts fans as well. Indianapolis is the center of the 10th Congressional district. It and the 1st District are where he is strongly favored, but they are also home to disproportionate concentrations of both the state's Democrats and its minority voters.

Indiana also holds an open primary, in which Republicans and independents can choose to vote in the Democratic race. In earlier states with similar rules, independent voters have been strength for Mr. Obama, but the Clinton campaign, in a conference call with reporters last Thursday, pointed to several new national polls suggesting that Mrs. Clinton has become increasingly competitive.

Mr. Obama continues to enjoy an enormous advantage in resources, vastly outspending Mrs. Clinton in television advertising. His volunteer headquarters is on the most prominent corner in Indianapolis' Downtown, at the corner of Washington and Meridian, just around the corner from the towering limestone war memorial at the center of the city.

"He's running an excellent campaign," Rose Marie Huff, a Democratic ward chair from the capital's North Side said of his organizational effort. "He's running circles around her.''

Ms. Huff, who says she's still making up her mind in the presidential contest, noted that she'd had far less contact from Mrs. Clinton's operatives than from Mr. Obama's.

Mrs. Clinton, however, has the support of the Democratic state chairman and the state's most prominent Democrat, Sen. Evan Bayh, an enormously popular former governor who carried 88 of the state's 92 counties in his last re-election.

Mr. Obama has been endorsed by former Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democratic icon in the state. Last week, he also picked up the support of Rep. Baron Hill, whose 9th District covers much of southern Indiana to go with that of Rep. Andre Carson, whose district is in the center of the state. He picked up another superdelegate from the state Thursday when Joe Andrew, who was Democratic National Committee chairman under President Bill Clinton, switched his allegiance from Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Obama was here Wednesday, hoping to reassert control over his campaign message during an appearance with his wife, Michelle, on a gorgeous spring afternoon. Sitting in a picnic pavilion in a city park surrounded by blossoming fruit trees, he spoke to and answered questions from about 40 invited supporters.

"I'm the cynic in the family,'' Mrs. Obama confided as she sat next to him on a picnic bench. "This one, this is the 'Hope' guy.''

After discussing his disagreement with Mrs. Clinton on suspending the federal gas tax for the summer driving season, and offering his views on issues ranging from education to the treatment of veterans, he was asked about the running melodrama that had kept his campaign off-message for days.

"The situation with Rev. Wright has been difficult, I won't lie to you,'' he said referring to comments made by his former pastor in Chicago in several widely televised appearances last weekend. "So I made a statement yesterday that was hard to make but was what I believed. What we want to do now is make sure that isn't a perpetual distraction.''

Tuesday will tell the tale.

"The larger concept for me is about change,'' said James Madison, a historian and author of "The Indiana Way.''

"Change in Indiana has always been slow,'' he said.

He noted that the tension between identity politics and economic issues would test a state that has never elected a woman or an African-American to a major statewide office.

"Race is a wild card because of the tenderness of the issue in many places," he said, while noting that some men will be similarly reluctant to vote for a woman.

Ms. Huff, the Democratic ward chair, said she was still struggling with her vote.

"It's the first time in my life that I have the chance to vote for a woman. That has a lot to do with it,'' she said, while stressing that she found Mr. Obama a compelling candidate as well.

"The bottom line for me is, I'm a good liberal Democrat, but a lot of the rest of America isn't. Who is more electable? Is the country ready to elect a woman? Are they [ready to elect] a black man?''

Unused to attention

Indiana isn't used to this kind of attention.

"We've never experienced anything like this before; we've never had this kind of onslaught of media attention," said Ms. Wilkerson who's been trying to drum up votes in the contested gubernatorial primary here. "The presidential race completely eclipsed the governor's race.''

Tonight, the two candidates will have one of their last personal opportunities to sway the state's Democrats as they share the stage at the party's annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner.

The last time the state received such a national focus was in 1968, when Sens. Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy were on the ballot in a race won by Mr. Kennedy just weeks before his assassination. The most gripping and poignant episode of that primary was Mr. Kennedy's speech to a largely black crowd in Indianapolis on the day that Martin Luther King had been shot dead.

Most members of the crowd heard the news from Mr. Kennedy.

Describing the event in his book, "Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary,'' Roy E. Boomhower wrote, "Facing the stunned and incredulous audience, some of whom were weeping, Kennedy gave an impassioned, extemporaneous, approximately 6-minute speech that has gone down in history as one of the great addresses in the modern era. ...

"To help explain the terrible tragedy, Kennedy recalled the words of Aeschylus, the Greek tragedian whose words from Agamemnon had comforted him following the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. Aeschylus, he said, "once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' "

No Indiana primary has attracted such eloquence or attention since.