Bernie Sanders easily won the ME caucuses over Hillary Clinton on Sunday, a much-needed victory for the Vermont senator who continues to trail the Democratic front-runner in Democratic delegates overall.
Advertisement
Republicans had events in four states, with front-runner Donald Trump winning two – Louisiana and Kentucky – and Senator Ted Cruz winning the other two – ME and Kansas.
And Sanders’s victories showed that the self-described Democratic Socialist can stay in the race despite the long odds of defeating Clinton.
“No candidate is now on track to win the nomination outright, ” said John Weaver, Kasich’s chief strategist. If he doesn’t have a strong showing Tuesday in MI, the drumbeat for him to get out even before his home state of OH votes on March 15 will grow.
On the Democratic side, Clinton is farther along than Trump on the march to her party’s nomination, outpacing Sanders with 1,066 delegates to his 432, including pledged superdelegates. Marco Rubio defended his position in the Republican presidential race, insisting his campaign doesn’t ride on whether he wins his home state’s March 15 winner-take-all primary.
Cruz was born in Canada, which Trump has suggested in the past makes the Texas lawmaker ineligible for the White House.
So far, Trump leads in delegates with 378.
On Saturday night, ABC News projected Ted Cruz as the victor of the Kansas Republican caucuses, based on vote analysis.
Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, pushed the idea of a convention fight during a blistering anti-Trump speech this week. Louisiana was off by 70,000 votes from 2008, Nebraska was way down, too, but the Kansas caucuses were up marginally. Cruz prevailed in Republican contests in Kansas and Maine. Sanders now has seven state wins to Clinton’s 12.
“We’ve got the momentum, the energy and the excitement that will take us all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia”, Sanders said in a statement. “The scream you hear, the howl that comes from Washington D.C., is utter terror at what we the people are doing together”. He netted just 34 total delegates in the GOP race. Cruz had 231, Rubio 110 and Kasich 25. I can tell you this: “Where I grew up, if someone keeps punching people in the face, eventually someone’s going to have to stand up and punch them back”, he said.
That would mean a contested or “brokered” convention, a scenario that could turn chaotic, especially if establishment figures seek to somehow actively prevent delegates from coalescing around Trump.
The wins for Trump and Cruz on Saturday were a setback for a Republican establishment that has largely lined up behind Marco Rubio, a USA senator who was shut out in the four contests.
When you include superdelgates – party insiders who can choose any candidate – Clinton now has at least 1,121 delegates, compared with at least 481 for Sanders. “And what we’re seeing is we’re seeing supporters from other candidates coming and joining us whether they were with Jeb Bush, whether they were with Chris Christie, whether they were with Ben Carson, whether they’d been with Marco Rubio or Rand Paul”. And if, when delegates are free to vote as they please, none of the candidates is able to secure a majority, it is possible that an off-the-board name such as Romney’s could be entered for consideration.
Trump’s “tapped into a level of frustration that transcends religiosity”, said Ed Chervenak, who heads the University of New Orleans Survey Research Center. Team Clinton calls Mr Cruz the easiest opponent to beat in the general election of November, with the narrowest nationwide appeal.
Advertisement
There was no serious erosion in the delegate lead for either Trump or Clinton.
