On the Democratic side, polls show Clinton, who has won three of the first four Democratic contests, with a big lead in six Southern states that have large blocs of black voters, who have been slow to warm to Sanders, a U.S.
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Beyond the candidates, Matt Teague is filing from Alabama, Lois Beckett from Vermont, Richard Wolffe from Georgia, Lucia Graves from Virginia, Jill Abramson from Massachusetts, Megan Carpentier from Minnesota, Jeb Lund from Arkansas, Sam Levin from Colorado, Julia O’Malley from Alaska and Adam Gabbatt will be reporting from Tennessee.
MIAMI (AP) – Donald Trump looks to extend his dominance as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio scramble for delegates in presidential primary contests across 11 states on a Super Tuesday marked by panic from Republican leaders even before the results were known.
Clinton’s victories in the South are further evidence of her strength among African-American voters, which could make it extremely hard for Sanders to win the nomination.
It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.
Mr Trump tried to explain away his failure to speak out against Duke when he was asked about the Klan supporter on Sunday, saying he didn’t hear the question properly and blaming a “bad ear piece”. While Clinton leads in the South, he is expecting races like Minnesota, Colorado and Massachussetts to be competitive, and the Democratic party’s rule that delegates are allocated proportionally once candidates receive over 15 percent of the vote. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., waves as he leaves a news conference after voting in the Vermont primary at the Robert Miller Community and Recreation Center in Burlington, Vermont, Tuesday.
Donald Trump is expected to win the majority of Republican contests today.
About 1,000 Democratic delegates are at stake, just over 40 per cent of those needed to win. Although evangelicals helped him win Iowa, according to ABC News exit poll analysis, he narrowly lost that vote with Trump in SC, and lost that vote to Trump and Rubio in Nevada, and to Trump in SC.
Minnesota was one of 12 states hosting presidential preference polling on a day dubbed Super Tuesday. And the 595 delegates up for grabs between Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. In the Democratic race, Super Tuesday did not provide a clear victory for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday blasted Trump’s “seeming ambivalence about David Duke and the KKK”, joining House Speaker Paul Ryan’s earlier call for the Republican front-runner to reject racism.
The encounter reflected the acrimonious nature of the 2016 campaign and the divisions it has laid bare among Republicans, adding to the traditional split between the two major American political parties. The last is going to be a problem for Democrats in a Clinton-Trump contest.
Pleading for a two-man race with Trump, who is leading the GOP pack nationwide, Cruz insisted the billionaire is now benefiting from “fractured opposition”.
Twelve states are casting votes for candidates from both the Republican and Democratic party nominations.
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Colvin reported from Valdosta, Georgia.
