Ted Cruz claimed an easy victory in Kansas, and Republicans said he won ME in Saturday’s four-state round of Republican voting, fresh evidence that there’s no quick end in sight to the fractious GOP race for president.
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The races on Saturday will test whether there’s any fallout from a wild week in Republican politics, which included Romney’s attacks on Trump and a raucous Fox News debate in which the candidates mostly yelled over one another and Trump boasted about the size of his genitals.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had big wins on Saturday, picking up at least 60 delegates during wins at Republican caucuses in Kansas and Maine.
Trump won Louisiana and Kentucky on Saturday while Cruz took ME and Kansas.
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz won two nominating contests each in the Republican race for U.S. presidency on Saturday, even as Bernie Sanders took two to Hillary Clinton’s one on the Democratic side.
There are a total of 155 delegates at stake in four states Saturday: Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine.
With the GOP race in chaos, establishment figures are frantically looking for any way to derail Trump, perhaps at a contested convention if no candidate can get enough delegates to lock up the nomination before the party meets in July.
Asked again on Sunday whether he plans to do so after the March 15 set of primaries including Florida and OH – where Rubio and Kasich will be waging last stands in their home states – Romney demurred.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the CFE Arena during a campaign stop on the campus of the University of Central Florida on March 5, 2016 in Orlando, Florida. He placed fourth in ME, behind Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Cruz also got a morale boost from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Washington, where he won a straw poll, further demonstrating his appeal to the Republican Party’s conservative base. Election day voters, however, showed softening support for Trump later in the evening.
A young first-time senator, Cruz is disliked intensely by party leaders and colleagues in the United States senate – some of the terms used to describe him are “wacko-bird” , “abrasive” , “arrogant” , “creepy” and “tricky” . “I have experience at beating people who don’t say who they truly are”. It takes 2,383 delegates to win.
In the overall race for GOP delegates, including partial results for Kansas, Trump led with 347 and Cruz had 267.
For its part, Rubio’s campaign spun the apparent bad night by placing an emphasis on future contests, in which Rubio’s team argued that Rubio would be best positioned to compete with Trump. Sanders too fell further behind Clinton despite wins in two states, mainly on account of Clinton’s hold on the African-American vote that has propelled her to big victories in states with large black populations.
According to the survey, Rubio leads Trump 48 percent to 23 percent among the voters who have already cast ballots during the early voting period.
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There has been considerably less drama in the Democratic race since Clinton bounced back from her loss in New Hampshire with victories in Nevada, South Carolina and across the South on Super Tuesday.
