Since neither Cruz nor Kasich can win the nomination on a first-ballot vote, anti-Trump Republicans need to start considering potential nominees who might be able to court the establishment while giving an olive branch to Trump supporters. Clinton, already in control of the Democratic race, defeated challenger Bernie Sanders in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and CT. But his main rival, Ted Cruz, got a head start in the intricate game of delegate-courting, directing some of his resources to states where he knew he could get his supporters named as delegates.
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Meanwhile, most voters in Pennsylvania say they are voting for their candidate, rather than against his opponents. Candidates and outside groups have spent $13.9 million dollars on advertisements in the states, with Clinton and Sanders dominating the spending.
Sanders did manage a victory in Rhode Island, the only of the five states with an open primary, but the road to the Democratic nomination for the Vermont senator virtually disappeared with losses in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and CT.
That’s according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.
In his victory speech Tuesday night, having swept all five primary states that voted, Donald Trump made a comment about Hillary Clinton that went viral on social media. Fifty-seven delegates are at stake, about half of them awarded winner-take-all on the basis of the statewide vote.
Trump said his next focus is on IN, which is set to hold its primary May 3. Including superdelegates, the former secretary of state has crossed the 2,000 delegate threshold and is nearly 90 percent of the way to the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the nomination.
Ignoring the Northeast on Monday, Cruz insisted, “We are at a fundamental fork in the road”, as he campaigned in Indiana.
“Every person in this country should have the right to vote for whom they want to see as president of the United States and what they want to see the agenda, Democratic agenda, look like”, Sanders told The AP late Tuesday. By those calculations, Clinton is leading Sanders by 754 delegates. Donald trump is basically just under 400 delegates away from the magic number. He has vowed to compete until the final District of Columbia primary in June.
Sanders, speaking to a big crowd in Huntington, West Virginia, showed no signs of getting out of the race and said he was shedding light on inconvenient truths about how hard life was these days for some Americans.
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Trump has recently overhauled his campaign team, bringing on new and more experienced operatives. But across the three states, almost 8 in 10 Sanders voters say Wall Street hurts the economy, while Clinton voters were more divided on the question.
