Voters in a dozen states will turn out for primaries and caucuses, allotting a generous share of the delegates who will decide which candidates carry the Democratic and Republican banners into the fall campaign. And Minnesota, Colorado and Alaska are caucus states that could experience more hiccups than state-run primary states.
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With just hours to go before polls open, the Republican and Democratic frontrunners fended off rivals and made last-ditch appeals to supporters ahead of what may be the most consequential day of voting in the 2016 primaries. Prepared for Tuesday’s results, they acknowledge that he will need to defeat her in showdown primaries after Tuesday, once the campaign shifts to more friendly ground in industrial and other northern states.
In Boston, Hillary Clinton appeared at the Old South Meeting House for a 30-minute speech, where she twice referenced an “esteemed opponent” with whom she disagrees with on free college education and guns. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and wife Jane Sanders board a plane to leave Minneapolis, Minn., Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, en route to MA the day before Super Tuesday. Her wins in Georgia and Virginia were the first of what her campaign hoped would be a sweep of the South, a region where large segments of the Democratic electorate are black.
Trump’s campaign has been a strategic success in another, subtler way: He’s quietly climbed down from positions that might alienate too many GOP voters. The State Department released the last set of emails from her private computer on Monday.
But going forward, several major contests – such as Florida, New York and California, all favoring Clinton – award delegates to their national party conventions on a winner-take- all basis, making it hard for flagging campaigns to catch up with party front-runners.
The Republican establishment has finally woken to the danger it’s in: Unless something changes soon, Donald Trump is going to be the party’s nominee for president. “And I said because for months I’ve been talking about real ideas and they don’t cover them”. Scapegoating people, fingerpointing, blaming.
Hillary Clinton speaks during at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
“There are a number of us, now that Gov. Bush is out of the race, who were very impressed with his debate Thursday, and see him as the one to take down Trump”, said Chicago investor Craig Duchossois, who shifted from Bush to Rubio.
Clinton has increasingly turned her attention to Trump in recent days, casting herself as a civil alternative to the insults and bullying that have consumed the Republican race. Trump came into Super Tuesday with 82, Cruz, 18, Rubio 16, Kasich 6 and Carson 4. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen.
Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, including accusing Mexico of sending rapists across the border, mocking women and the disabled and urging a ban on Muslims entering the country, would have been the undoing of a normal candidate.
“I’m representing a lot of anger out there”, Trump told CNN.
Other Republican leaders were less explicit, but sent similar messages on Monday, particularly in light of Trump’s refusal to immediately disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s support.
Some conservatives have spoken up to say they will shun Trump if he is the nominee.
Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, a rising star among conservatives, became the first current senator to publicly raise the prospect of backing a third party option if Trump clinches the nomination.
“If our party is no longer working for the things we believe in… then people of good conscience should stop supporting that party until it is reformed”, he wrote. Though the share of leaned Republicans choosing Clinton on any of the tested issues tops out at 8 percent on health care, Trump is the most trusted for 15 percent of leaned Democrats on terrorism, 14 percent on the economy and 13 percent on immigration.
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Almost 600 Republican delegates are up for grabs Tuesday, nearly half the 1,237 needed to secure the nomination.
