The Texas senator already had locked up the support of 21 Colorado delegates and visited the state to try to pad his numbers there.
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“After that, they would do their duty and support whoever has the best chance of winning” in the November general election, he said. An Emerson College Polling Society survey found Trump had a 34-point lead over Ted Cruz in NY. His campaign announced the change of plans earlier today, following a massive yet strangely lackluster rally in Bethpage, Long Island on Wednesday night (April 6).
Mr Cruz has been criticised for a comment he made in a debate in January, where he said: “Everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage”.
On Saturday morning, Cruz volunteers wearing bright orange shirts swept through the arena, handing out glossy sheets listing the campaign’s preferred delegate candidates.
He may also turn to delegates who backed candidates who have dropped out of the race, says Joshua Putnam, of the University of Georgia whose frontloading.blogspot.com explores the primaries.
“Coming out of the convention you’ve got to raise a tremendous amount of money to campaign and it’s pretty tough to raise money if you’re not the confirmed candidate”, said John Truscott, a former state delegate who now has the public relations firm Truscott Rossman. It takes 2,383 delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination. If Trump is close to the magic number, for example, he might be able to scrounge up delegates in the five states and territories that didn’t have statewide presidential preference votes during the primary season.
“When we began this campaign, everyone was really, really nice to me because they thought we were irrelevant”, Sanders said. “We are in this race to win”.
Hillary Clinton has also lost some of her advantage in NY recently.
“We will see what happens at the time”, she said.
“It become hard, more difficult” for Trump to win in the first ballot, Republican Montana Sen.
In a typical year, when the selection of the presidential nominee is decided well before the actual convention, the naming of delegates has no real impact. “Here in Colorado, ya’ll have had seven elections in the past week”, Cruz told the arena during an appearance here. Trump’s organizers distributed a slate that listed incorrect information for four of his candidates.
If Mr Cruz wins most or all of the Colorado delegates, it increases the odds of a contested convention this summer. The process could “dilute the delegate advantages accrued by the victor of the June 7 California primary”, the Field Poll researchers said.
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The highly-respected Field Poll shows Donald Trump with 39 percent of likely Republican voters, Ted Cruz at 32 percent and John Kasich at 18 percent – with the final 11 percent undecided.
