According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday morning, Trump grabs 34 percent of Republican support to lead the ticket in 2016. His closest rival, Ted Cruz, only got 22 percent while Marco Rubio only received 17 percent and John Kasich got 13 percent of likely votes from Republican primary voters.
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The caucus was created so Kentucky’s Rand Paul could run for president and re-election to the Senate without violating a state law banning candidates from appearing on the ballot twice in one day.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton meets with the Rev. Kenneth J. Flowers of the Greater New Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church before meeting with African American ministers, Saturday, March 5, 2016, in Detroit, Michigan.
Had the immigration package passed back then, Clinton said, “a lot of the issues we are still discussing today would be in the rearview mirror”.
Trump said the record-breaking turnout his march to the Republican presidential nomination had produced is “absolutely unique and special”.
He adds that “the calendar has moved more to home-court advantage” and says that he’s “really not that far behind” front-runner Donald Trump in overall support heading into next week.
The Texas senator was leading Trump by more than a 2-to-1 margin in partial returns in Kansas. “He will win states, we will rack up delegates”, one Clinton aide told CNN.
The new round of voting comes amid an uproar in the Republican Party over the increasing likelihood that Trump will emerge as the GOP nominee. That is a problem for Sanders because the nomination could be decided by the large numbers of minority voters in the Democratic electorate, to which Clinton has demonstrated she has more appeal. But his backing from voters has lagged, and he entered Tuesday’s contests with just a pair of victories in the Minnesota caucuses and Saturday’s Puerto Rico primary. Republican leaders say they will not consider a nominee and will leave that choice to the next president.
With a Tuesday night win in Idaho, Cruz hopes to play spoiler in the next round of contests, bolstering his case that he’s the only candidate who can beat Trump with some regularity.
Trump has been very popular with Republican primary voters but is feared unelectable in the November general election because of his off-color language, his proposal to build a wall along the Mexican border and his denigration of Hispanics, Muslims and women.
Bernie Sanders is racking up victories in the nation’s midsection.
Rubio’s weak standing has forced anxious Republican officials to come to terms with the idea that their second least favourite GOP presidential candidate, the polarizing Cruz, may be the party’s best last chance to stop Trump. Like Kasich, Rubio must win his home state in order to remain a viable contender. But Clinton, who won MS, padded her delegate lead and is now halfway to the number needed to clinch the nomination.
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Speaking to supporters in Jupiter, Florida Trump said, “there’s only one person who did well tonight: Donald J. Trump”. That hasn’t happened in more than 50 years, and it would only happen if Trump was unable to win a majority of delegates.
