Texas Sen. Ted Cruz needs the outlier to be the one in Indiana.
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“I don’t know if he likes me or he doesn’t like me”, Trump said, “but he is one hell of a competitor”. Trump, in a victory speech that was much lower-key than usual, promised victory in November, vowing anew to put “America first”. He said he voted for Sanders even though he doesn’t think the Vermont senator can win.
Donald Trump and Sen. Trump called Cruz a very tough competitor with an unbelievable future.
Trump also was supported by most GOP voters who say they’re angry about the way the federal government is working. Trump, considered a fringe candidate a year ago, now is poised to represent Republicans in the fall presidential campaign.
For months, Republican leaders considered him a fringe candidate and banked on voters shifting toward more traditional contenders. The chairman of the Republican National Committee later declared Trump to be the “presumptive nominee” of the GOP.
“We all need to unite and focus on defeating @HillaryClinton”, he wrote.
Cruz had been counting on a win in Tuesday’s primary to slow the NY businessman’s progress toward the nomination. While some GOP leaders have warmed to the real estate mogul, others have promised to never vote for him and see him as a threat to their party’s very existence.
Even before the IN results were finalized, some conservative leaders were planning a Wednesday meeting to assess the viability of launching a third party candidacy to compete with him IN the fall.
Ten days before Indiana’s primary, Cruz and Kasich announced a potential game-changer: Kasich would skip IN to let Cruz have a one-on-one shot at Trump there; Cruz IN turn would stay out of OR and New Mexico.
Meanwhile, every GOP lawmaker and down-ballot candidate has a choice to make: Are you a Trump Republican or not?
“We are not a proud, boastful, self-centered, mean-spirited, hateful, bullying nation”, Cruz said alongside his wife Heidi and running mate Carly Fiorina earlier in the day.
Cruz had clung to the hope that he could keep Trump from reaching the 1,237 delegates needed for the nomination and push the race to a rare contested convention.
“I am in for the distance, as long as we have a viable path to victory”, Cruz told reporters on Monday.
Based on 13 percent of precincts reporting, the billionaire took 53.8 percent of the vote, streets ahead of Cruz on 33.9 and Ohio Governor John Kasich on 9.4 percent.
Trump needs to win just 43 percent of the remaining delegates to capture the nomination by the end of the primaries on June 7. Just under 4 in 10 say it creates jobs.
The economy was weighing heavily on the minds of IN voters as they cast ballots IN their state’s primary election.
Clinton’s march to the Democratic nomination was slowed by rival Bernie Sanders’ victory over her in Indiana. The Vermont senator has cultivated a deeply loyal following, in particular among young people, a group Democrats count on in the general election.
Though Sanders claimed momentum, he has conceded his strategy hinges on persuading superdelegates to back him over the former secretary of state. And they favor Clinton by a almost 18-1 margin.
More than 9 in 10 Republican primary voters and more than 8 in 10 Democratic primary voters are either very or somewhat anxious about the economy, according to early results from exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.
He’ll have little chance of doing that if he doesn’t pull off more victories down the home stretch, which is why IN is important for him. But as NPR’s Arnie Seipel has calculated, even if all superdelegates voted the way their states did, Clinton would still have a 200-plus superdelegate lead over Sanders, with a 500 total delegate lead.
Trump now has at least 1,047 delegates.
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Cruz had hoped to show he was still a factor in the race.
