Not only did the NY businessman win a Southern state, his victory helped drive rival Jeb Bush out of the Republican race for president.
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“The people of Iowa, New Hampshire and SC have spoken and I respect their decision”.
“We are the only campaign that has beaten [in Iowa] and can beat Donald Trump”, Mr Cruz told his supporters, who represent the conservative wing of the Republicans.
Cruz worked to turn out the state’s sizable bloc of evangelical voters, but even among those voters Trump triumphed, according to exit polls.
SC marked Trump’s second straight victory – this one by 10 points – and strengthened his unexpected claim on the GOP nomination. No Republican in recent times has won New Hampshire and SC and then failed to win the nomination.
About three-quarters of Republican primary voters support a temporary ban on Muslims who are not USA citizens from entering the United States.
Meanwhile, Kasich and Carson both said they are ready to look past SC.
With 99.8 percent of precincts reporting, Rubio leads Cruz by about 1,000 votes. He struggled, however, to convert that early advantage into broad support as the campaign wore on, and faced mounting pressure to drop out so the establishment wing of the party could rally behind one anti-Trump candidate.
Florida’s Rubio used his top-tier finish to bill himself as the mainstream alternative to Trump and Cruz, candidates many GOP leaders believe are unelectable in November.
In a family-affair victory speech, Trump ticked off his policy promises, vowing to terminate President Barack Obama’s health care law and get Mexico to pay for a wall at the border.
Results with 99 percent of all votes counted so far showed that Bush garnered only 7.9 percent with a disappointing fourth-place finish.
Kasich won fans in SC by being the race’s most moderate, pragmatic candidate. Marco Rubio edged fellow freshman Sen.
“An terrible lot of Republicans are very concerned that Donald Trump is not the right candidate to go head-to-head with Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders”, Cruz said.
There were different fortunes for frontrunner Donald Trump who coasted to victory in SC.
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The real estate mogul Trump’s victory in the heart of the Deep South Saturday after a win in New Hampshire and a second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, gave him a major boost heading into Nevada’s Republican caucuses Tuesday and the slate of 13 states voting on Super Tuesday, March 1. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ben Carson at a debate in SC.
