Squeezed between last week’s high-profile Super Tuesday contests and high-stakes primaries next week in Florida and Ohio, Tuesday’s contests are unlikely to dramatically reshape either party’s primaries. Republicans were competing in four states – Michigan, Mississippi, Idaho, and Hawaii – with 150 delegates up for grabs.
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(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio). Republican presidential candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich shakes hands after speaking at a rally at the Monroe County Community College, Monday, March 7, 2016, in Monroe, Mich.
While Trump has stunned Republicans with his broad appeal, he’s forged a particularly strong connection with white working-class voters by emphasizing his opposition to worldwide trade deals and support for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders concentrated on MI, which also has primaries Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Kasich’s campaign spokesman Chris Schrimpf told CNN the former MA governor also recorded calls in MI on behalf of the OH governor. In February, the candidate’s team prematurely told supporters Ben Carson was dropping out of the race during the Iowa caucus.
With Marco Rubio faltering, Ted Cruz ascendant and John Kasich showing flickers of life, the contours of the GOP race have shifted from just one week ago, when the conventional wisdom held that the race was effectively a two-man contest between Trump and Rubio.
With the failure to coalesce around one of the three other candidates, Romney and others are pushing a strategy of denying Trump enough delegates to win the nomination before the Republican National Convention, which starts June 7 in Cleveland.
His GOP dream ticket would be Trump at the top with his second choice, Texas Sen.
“After this past weekend’s mixed bag of results, Trump appears positioned for a win in MI, but the race may be tightening in the final hours”, Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a press release accompanying the poll.
Cruz said Trump has “been integrally involved in the corruption in Washington”.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who has not endorsed anyone in the race, said some of his colleagues simply haven’t adjusted to Cruz’s surging candidacy. But Clinton progressed regardless, passing the halfway mark in the delegates needed for the nomination. She’s steadily grown her lead over Sanders, who has struggled to broaden his appeal beyond a loyal following of younger voters and liberals.
Cummings said she thought that Clinton would likely be the eventual Democratic nominee.
Kelly is a former district attorney who won a June 2015 special election to fill a vacancy left by the death of Republican Rep. Alan Nunnelee.
“I believe that he is a true fighter for conservatives”, said Berry, a 67-year-old retired AT&T manager.
“The sooner I could become your nominee the more I could begin to turn our attention to the Republicans”, she said. But Bloomberg aides say that path is now blocked with Clinton emerging as the likely Democratic nominee. He also seems to have picked up some upscale suburban voters in MI, who had previously supported the increasingly less relevant Rubio as an establishment alternative to Trump.
Ryan Knott supported the auto industry bailout credited with saving Midwest manufacturing during the Great Recession.
Of more effect is her more than 2-to-1 delegate lead over Sanders: 1,134 to 502, before Tuesday’s results. It’s less certain that Rubio will. A Magellan poll conducted in late February, before the tide turned against Rubio, found Trump leading with 41% support, followed by Cruz at 17% and Rubio at 16%. The Texas senator is sticking close to Trump in the delegate count and with six states in his win column, he’s arguing he’s the only candidate standing between the brash billionaire and the GOP nomination. For years, Republican leaders cast GOP hardliners as merely a restive minority. Ted Cruz, who shrugged off a disappointing showing on Super Tuesday last week.
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Republican presidential candidate, Sen. If Trump, 69, could sweep those two states and pile up delegates elsewhere, it would probably knock home-state favorites Rubio and Kasich out of the race and make it tough for Cruz to catch him.
