Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton claimed victories in Georgia and Virginia, while rival Bernie Sanders won his home state of Vermont in Super Tuesday elections on the biggest day of the primary campaign.
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On the Democratic side, Clinton took advantage of her strong performance with black voters to cruise to big wins in several Southern states, where blacks make up a big bloc of the Democratic electorate. Sanders and Clinton faced off in 11 states for 865 of the 2,383 delegates needed to win the Democratic race. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas and eked out surprise win in Oklahoma, bolstering his argument he’s the strongest candidate to topple Trump.
But Cruz stopping Trump looks impossible with Rubio…John Kasich and Ben Carson staying in the race…
Super Tuesday, or the SEC Primary, marks the most important day in primary politics, with 13 states producing results on the Republican and Democratic sides.
According to the Super Tuesday exit polls, Democratic voters were more likely to want a continuation of Obama’s policies than switch to more liberal policies in eight of nine states where surveys were conducted.
Sanders thanked cheering supporters in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and assailed the Republican front-runner.
Cruz told reporters that a candidate who has not won a state after Tuesday’s events should consider getting out.
Among those who said they cared most about a candidate being honest and trustworthy, most voters in Virginia and Georgia supported Mr Sanders.
Yet Cruz seized on Rubio’s struggles, calling on the GOP to unify behind his candidacy, “the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump”.
The Super Tuesday contests are a delegate bonanza for front-runners and a test of survival for others as voters went to the polls across the nation, including in the Deep South, in Colorado and Texas, in ice-bound Alaska and Minnesota. Trump will hold a news conference Tuesday night in Palm Beach, Fla.; at the same time, Rubio stages a Florida “kickoff rally” in Miami. It will take 1,237 delegates to secure the nomination at the party’s national convention in July.
“I mean, if she hasn’t straightened it out by now, she’s not going to straighten it out in the next four years”. Democrats also held a contest in American Samoa and for US citizens living overseas.
Trump has won at least 175 of the delegates at stake in today’s contests.
However, Rubio was expected to face quick calls from Trump to drop out of the race if he failed to pick up any wins. His closest challenger was Rubio at 16 percent, followed by Cruz at 15 percent.
The outcome was a far cry from predictions six months ago, when Cruz called Tuesday’s SEC primary his “firewall”, predicting it would be the day on which he made major progress toward securing the nomination.
The worries among Republicans appeared to grow after Trump briefly refused to disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke during a television interview.
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“Paul Ryan, I don’t know him well, but I’m sure I’m going to get along great with him”, Trump said.
