Wisconsin was a must-win for both Cruz and Sanders as the 2016 race shifts to NY, where both front-runners will try to regain their footing in the state they call home.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) – National front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are favored to win in Pennsylvania later this month, but both have just single-digit leads in the Keystone State, a new poll finds.
With more than three-quarters of precincts reporting, Cruz had 49 per cent of the vote to Trump’s 34 per cent. Ohio Governor John Kasich had 14 per cent.
And the former secretary of state is wasting no time welcoming Sanders back to the state where he grew up.
Cruz’s double-digit win over Trump was a breakthrough for Republican Party forces battling to block the controversial NY billionaire, and it raised the prospect of a prolonged nomination fight that could last to the July convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
Mr Trump hit back in a bitter statement and said that Mr Cruz was a “Trojan horse being used by the (Republican) party bosses” to steal the nomination from him.
Sanders was speaking in Wyoming, which holds a caucus contest this weekend.
The Vermont senator campaigned hard in Wisconsin, which has a deep progressive tradition where any voter can take a Democratic ballot and first-time voters can register and cast ballots on primary day. He claims he can adopt a more “presidential” posture whenever he wants to.
Still, Trump made a spirited final push in the state and predicted a “really, really big victory”. He is also continuing to present himself as the Republican anti-candidate, suggesting that Cruz is merely doing the party’s bidding.
Sanders was also confident of his chances in NY, the state where he was born and that Clinton represented in the Senate.
David Wasserman, an election analyst at the Cook Political Report, said Cruz’s victory bodes “well for him in Indiana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and other more culturally conservative states that have yet to vote”.
It means Donald Trump is less likely than before to have locked up the GOP nomination when the last primaries are over on June 7. Kasich is mathematically unable to obtain 1,237 delegates during the primary process.
Bernie Sanders added to his win streak by defeating Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, but barely dented her commanding delegate lead. But more than half also say Clinton is the candidate best suited to beat Trump.
Sanders said during a rally Tuesday night in Wyoming, where Democrats hold caucuses on Saturday, that he thinks he can win there and in NY two weeks from now. We are winning because we are uniting the Republican Party’.
A recent YouGov poll found that 63 percent of Republican voters-including 67 percent of GOP women-considered Trump’s retweet of an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz inappropriate. “And it’s definitely not leadership”, said Tami Cain of Brookfield, Wisconsin. That would leave Trump still leading the race with 740 delegates, followed by Cruz with 514 and Kasich at 143.
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Paul Lorentz, was in line at 6:30 a.m.in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, on Tuesday to cast his vote for Kasich. And preventing Trump from achieving that is Cruz’s chief objective at this point. But the next big primary will be in NY on April 19, and Sanders has vowed to take on Clinton in her adopted home state. And among voters 65 and older, 47 percetn said they supported Cruz and 37 percent said they supported Trump. In that event, as the runner-up in delegate strength, he hopes to consolidate a coalition that could win him the nomination. But he will need to do so by margins similar to what he achieved in Wisconsin, in order to reduce Clinton’s lead among pledged delegates and, potentially, turn the loyalties of the superdelegates prior to the convention in Philadelphia.
