Donald Trump will win the South Carolina Republican primary, NBC News projects, with a tight battle for second place still undecided between Florida Sen.
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Both former president George W. Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush campaigned for Jeb Bush in the state. In particular, the Kasich campaign hoped SC would knock out Bush, the OH governor’s closest rival in experience and ideology.
“Tonight, despite millions and millions of dollars of false and nasty attacks, despite the entirety of the political establishment coming together against us, SC has given us another remarkable result”, he said.
Trump carried those voters with 31 percent of the vote, while Cruz won 27 percent and Rubio got a 22 percent share.
The polling of voters in Nevada and SC was conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks by Edison Research as voters arrived at 25 randomly selected caucus sites. And she leaves Nevada with one of her campaign’s core arguments intact-that she is the candidate for African-American voters and that those voters will be her firewall going forward. He also predicted that as other Republican candidates eventually drop out, many of their supporters will switch to his side.
Media captionHere’s a message mash up of how Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush made their campaign announcements.
Indeed, Trump regularly targeted Bush, defining him as “dumb as a rock” and “low energy”. Trump had 29 percent among Republicans who are college graduates, with Rubio second with 24 percent. When Jeb Bush looked like a threat to Trump, Trump took him down.
Mr Trump won SC despite getting into a controversy with Pope Francis and having a debate performance that raised questions about his temperament in the days before the voting.
By the end, the former Florida governor faced a mountain of pressure to get out of the race, clearing a path for other establishment candidates like Marco Rubio, who fared better in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Kasich entered SC with new attention after his second-place finish in New Hampshire Feb. 9, but wasn’t expected to duplicate the result in the conservative Palmetto State.
“We still want to be a country that’s open to immigration and that will be open to people of all nationalities and religious beliefs”, she said.
Clinton, who at one point only a month ago was up by 17 percentage points in Nevada, garnered 52.4 percent of those caucusing Saturday. During his victory speech Saturday, Trump did not mention or offer any good wishes for Bush.
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The New York billionaire said he is leading “an incredible movement with incredible people”, as the crowd chanted “U-S-A!” Marco Rubio, who dueled over evangelical voters and exchanged bitter taunts in a feverish final week of campaigning.
