MERRILLVILLE | Presidential candidates and their families continue to lavish attention on Indiana this month as U.S. Sen Barack Obama's wife announced a Friday campaign stop in Merrillville.

Michelle Obama will visit the Merrillville Intermediate School's Larry Martin Gymnasium at 5 p.m. Friday to boost visibility for her husband's campaign for the Democratic nomination in the presidential election.

Free tickets for the event will be available at www.barackobama.com. A ticket will be required for admission. Doors open at 4 p.m.

It will be the fifth presidential campaign stop in Northwest Indiana in three weeks.

Barack Obama visited Gary last week, while his primary election opponent, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has visited Northwest Indiana twice in the past three weeks. Clinton's daughter Chelsea visited East Chicago earlier this month as well.

Although Obama has for weeks been projected as the national front-runner for the Democratic Party's nomination, Clinton had been posting a decent lead over him in polls of Hoosier voters.

But on Tuesday, a new survey of Indiana residents likely to vote in the state primary May 6 reported that Obama now leads Clinton by a five-point margin.

A double-digit portion of the voters said they remain undecided, the LA Times/Bloomberg poll found.