Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders winning Tuesday’s Wisconsin primaries for their respective parties. Bernie Sanders carried the Democratic race over Hillary Clinton, a win that still leaves him with a mathematically hard path to the White House.
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If delegates commit to a presidential candidate when they are running, they must vote for that candidate at the party’s national convention this summer.
Instead, she attended a fundraiser at a private home in the Bronx, New York.
If the convention does turn into a floor fight with rotating delegate support, anybody could theoretically become the nominee, regardless of who had the most delegates to begin with (or even had any at all). “We have a choice, a real choice”.
Given the seemingly invincible nature of the Trump campaign juggernaut, Cruz managing to stay in the fight this long is impressive enough.
Trump’s also called Ohio Governor John Kasich a spoiler in the race.
Wisconsin will send 96 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and 42 to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Still, he has a more complicated task than Cruz in slowing his party’s front-runner, since Democratic delegates are doled out on a proportional basis rather than the winner-take-most formula used in Wisconsin by Republicans. An initial tally by the Associated Press showed Cruz gaining 39. His best shot to pick up any delegates was in the Madison-based 2nd District, where Republicans were more moderate, but Cruz is on pace to win there.
John Weaver, Kasich’s chief strategist, argued that the results show that no candidate will reach the required number of delegates before the convention, meaning the nomination contest “is now wide open”.
As many as 34 percent of Republican primary voters say that bringing needed change is the candidate quality that most mattered in their vote decision; Cruz and Trump run neck and neck among these voters.
Republican strategist Steve Grubbs, who advised Senator Rand Paul’s failed presidential bid, said the Wisconsin vote marks a point at which “Trump’s stall energizes a Cruz surge”. But he’ll need all the help he can get to score what may be a must-win in Clinton’s adopted home state, New York, two weeks from tonight.
Cruz, a Texas senator with a complicated relationship with Republican leaders, also cast his victory as a moment for unity in a party that has been roiled by a contentious primary campaign.
Unlike some other Great Lakes states where Trump scored easy wins, he came to campaign in Wisconsin facing opposition from the state’s entrenched Republican leadership. The senator won 48 per cent of the group’s vote, compared to 35 per cent for the businessman. The two states share some demographic and economic characteristics. Clinton would enter the fall campaign saddled with persistent questions about her honesty and trustworthiness, but also with a significant demographic advantage.
That means Sanders must still win 67 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates in order to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton now has 1,742 total delegates – 1,259 of whom are pledged or bound to vote for her and 483 superdelegates who have said they support her but theoretically could switch allegiances.
“Whether we are Muslim or Jewish or Christian when we stand together whether we are gay or straight male or female, yes we can create a government that represents all of us and not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors”, he said in Laramie, Wyoming where Democrats have a caucus on Saturday. But for Sanders, momentum, enthusiasm, and tens of millions of dollars in contributions were at stake in the Wisconsin outcome. The state will be a key inflection point in the race, determining whether Sanders’ already far-fetched path to victory has any hope. He won 73 per cent voters under age 45, 64 per cent of men, half of women, and 72 per cent of independents, according to figures published by CNN.
He ended his speech with a warning to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
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The polls indicate a mixed response on an issue that Sanders has put at the center of some of his most-aired television ads. The Vermont senator out-raised her by $15 million in March with his haul of $44 million – one reason, alongside his string of primary victories, why he has no incentive to get out of the race.
