John Kasich delivered a promised victory in OH on Tuesday, edging out Donald Trump and sending the Republican Party further down the path to a contested convention right here in Cleveland this summer. “Marco can paint a picture, can weave a tapestry of the promise of America like nobody else”, Cruz said before making an overture to Rubio’s supporters, “to those who supported Marco, who worked so hard, we welcome you with open arms”.
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Hillary Clinton triumphed Tuesday in the Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and IL presidential primaries, putting her in a commanding position to become the first woman in USA history to win a major-party nomination.
Updated to reflect the most recent poll results.
The Associated Press projected Trump as the victor just after the last polls in Florida’s western panhandle closed.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio suspended his campaign Tuesday night after failing to win his home state. “No candidate will win 1,237 delegates”, Kasich’s chief strategist, John Weaver, declared in a post-election memo. An emboldened Trump warned that if the party tried to block him, “You’d have riots”. Then he tried to get into an insult fight with Trump, and lost that. And some Clinton backers worry that she could face a barrage of similar and simultaneous attacks from both Sanders and Trump over her trade policy, Wall Street ties and funding from outside groups.
“I think if I win those two, I think it’s over”, Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last week.
That odd, mismatched strategy seemed to turn off voters: his poll numbers declined sharply. Pennsylvania is one of five states voting on April 26. “A real tsunami. And we should have seen this coming”.
Even in defeat, however, Rubio could not escape Trump.
Trump’s speech clearly wasn’t well rehearsed. The crowd booed, but Rubio shushed them.
Trump won all of Florida’s 99 delegates on Tuesday.
Ted Cruz spent slightly more than Kasich or Trump per vote but came much closer to their cost-effectiveness than to Rubio’s. So far, today’s results have extended it. Clinton trounced Sanders in Florida, where 214 pledged delegates are up for stakes. Now that Trump has all but ensured that he will be the outright nominee or he’ll have a majority delegate count in the event of a contested convention, will the GOP mount a challenge in Cleveland that will tip the nomination to Cruz – or worse in Trump’s eyes, recruit a white knight like Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush or even Paul Ryan?
By a roughly 2 to 1 margin, Democratic voters said Clinton had a better chance than Sanders of beating Trump in a general election matchup across Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Illinois and Missouri. Sanders did, however, manage to virtually tie Clinton in Missouri. Clinton had support of 65.6 per cent of the votes as against 30.6 per cent for Sanders. Although Tuesday was not his best night, he remains solidly in second place in the Republican primary race.
“When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States – when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong”.
After another good night for Trump, some Republicans were struggling to come to grips with the prospect of him becoming the nominee and desperate to find long-shot ways to stop him. “The fact is, we have to bring the Republican Party together”, he said.
Bump said the Republican establishment is likely in an all-out panic over the anti-establishment candidates.
Kasich and Texas Sen.
Republicans will now have to decide whether to rally behind one candidate or siphon votes away from Trump as a team.
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(W) Clinton 56.5%, Sanders 42.7%.
