Barack Obama took a commanding lead in the Democratic presidential race on Wednesday, but Hillary Clinton said she would fight on after loaning her campaign $6.4 million (3.27 million pounds) to keep it alive.
Obama's big win in North Carolina and Clinton's slim victory in Indiana widened his advantage in their battle for the right to face Republican John McCain in the November presidential election with just six contests remaining.
The results left the cash-strapped Clinton campaign with few opportunities to halt Obama's march to the nomination. But the New York senator remained defiant.
"I'm staying in this race until there is a nominee," Clinton told reporters after a campaign rally in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, which holds the next contest on Tuesday.
Clinton dipped into her personal fortune again in the past month to try to keep pace with Obama, putting $5 million into her campaign chest on April 11 and $1.4 million over the past week, aides said. It was the second time she used her own money to fund her White House bid.
"It's a sign of my commitment to this campaign," Clinton said of the loans.
She said she would fight on to contests in West Virginia, and in Oregon and Kentucky on May 20, but Obama aides said he was closing in on the nomination.
"We believe we are going to be the nominee of this party," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters. He said the campaign would begin to look ahead when possible to a general election campaign against McCain.
"We obviously still have a lot of votes to fight for," he said. "We're going to do the things we can in our off-hours to be ready."
Obama's 14-point victory in North Carolina was a dramatic rebound 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.
With just 217 delegates at stake in the final six contests, Clinton has no realistic chance to overtake Obama's lead in pledged delegates who will help pick the nominee at the August convention. It is also almost impossible for her to catch him in popular votes won in the state-by-state battle for the nomination that began in January.
An MSNBC count showed Tuesday's results expanded the Illinois senator's delegate edge by 12. He has 1,844 delegates to Clinton's 1,695 - leaving him about 200 short of the 2,025 needed to clinch the nomination.
