Clinton and Trump get closer to face-off
Bernie Sanders breathed new life into his long-shot White House bid with a crucial win in Michigan’s primary yesterday, chipping away at Hillary Clinton’s dominance in the Democratic presidential race.
Republican Donald Trump swept to victory in both Michigan and Mississippi, overcoming fierce efforts to blunt his momentum.
Even with Sanders’ win, Clinton and Trump moved closer to a general election face-off. Clinton breezed to an easy victory in Mississippi, propelled by overwhelming support from black voters, and she now has more than half the delegates she needs to clinch the Democratic nomination. Trump, too, padded his lead over Texas Senator Ted Cruz, his closest rival.
The frontrunners turned their sights on November as they revelled in their victories.
‘‘We are better than what we are being offered by the Republicans,’’ Clinton declared.
In a nod toward the kind of traditional politics he’s shunned, Trump emphasised the importance of helping Republican senators and House members get elected in November.
Having entered yesterday’s con- tests facing a barrage of criticism from rival candidates and outside groups, he delighted in overcoming the attacks.
‘‘Every single person who has attacked me has gone down,’’ Trump said at one of his Florida resorts. He was flanked by tables packed with his branded retail products, and defended his business record more thoroughly than he outlined his policy proposals for the country.
Sanders, meanwhile, said Michigan signalled that his campaign ‘‘is strong in every part of the country, and frankly we believe our strongest areas are yet to happen’’.
While a handful of recent losses to Cruz have raised questions about Trump’s durability, yesterday’s contests marked another lost opportunity for rivals to slow his momentum.
Next week’s winner-take-all primaries in Ohio and Florida loom large as perhaps the last chance to stop Trump short of a long-shot contested convention fight.
Ohio Governor John Kasich was in a fight for second place in Michigan and hoping a good showing would give him a boost heading into next week’s crucial contest in his home state.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a favourite of Republican elected officials, continued to struggle, upping the stakes for him at home on March 15.
The economy ranked high on the list of concerns for voters heading to the polls in Michigan and Mississippi. At least eight in 10 voters in each party’s primary said they were worried about where the economy is heading, according to early exit polls.
Among Democrats, 8 in 10 voters in both states said the country’s economic system benefits the wealthy, not all Americans.
Sanders has sought to tap into that concern, energising young people and white working-class voters with his calls for breaking up Wall Street banks and making tuition free at public colleges and universities.
Michigan, with big college towns and a sizeable population of working-class voters, should be a good fit for him. But Clinton has led in polling.
The results in Mississippi underscored Clinton’s overwhelming strength with black voters and Sanders’ stunning inability to draw support from a constituency who are crucial to Democrats in the general election.
Clinton carried nearly nine in 10 black voters in Mississippi, mirroring her margins in other Southern states with large African-American populations.
After yesterday’s results, Clinton has accumulated 1214 delegates and Sanders 566, including superdelegates – members of Congress, governors and party officials who can support the candidate of their choice at the convention. Democrats need 2383 delegates to win the nomination.
With yesterday’s wins, Trump leads the Republican field with 428 delegates, followed by Cruz with 315, Rubio with 151 and Kasich with 52. Winning the Republican nomination requires 1237 delegates.