Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump favourites to win New York

WASHINGTON: New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most of it unsolved, the late night host Johnny Carson remarked once, but the state that is home to Big Apple will resolve at least one issue in the US presidential election nomination race.
If Bernie Sanders does not win the state’s primaries on Tuesday — and it looks unlikely he will — it’s pretty much over for him, although he could drag it on for some more weeks if he performs strongly.Considering his campaign packed up and left town even before polling, it appears they may be preparing for defeat despite enormous support from the youth.
On the Republican side, Trump is favoured to win despite a massive poll-eve flub when he mixed up 9/11with 7/11 (the convenience store chain), but his expected victory will still leave the party nomination unresolved given all the innerparty shenanigans aimed at denying him the party ticket.
Democrats allocate their delegates proportionally according to the candidates’ vote shares in New York State, so the margin by which Hillary Clinton wins is important. In the 14 polls released since the beginning of April, Clinton has led by as little as 6 points and as much as 18 points. If she clocks 18%, she would snag a big chunk of the state’s 247 pledged delegates and put Sanders out of the race.
The state also has 44 unpledged Democratic delegates, most of them in the Clinton camp. Clinton leads 1,758 to Sanders’ 1,076 in the race for 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
Things are a little more complicated on the Republican side. Trump has led almost every poll by 30 points or more, but it is hard to figure out how many of the state’s 95 delegates he will get if he wins. He is assured of winning 14 delegates awarded based on the statewide result if he gets 50% of the votes, but the remaining 81 are allocated by congressional district, with each of New York’s 27 districts awarding three delegates to the winner in that district.
So Trump could win the overall state by a large margin but still lose delegates to his rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich in the race for 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Trump currently leads Cruz 744-559.
If none of the candidates get to 1,237, New York’s delegates, as also many other states’ delegates, will be able to vote for whomever they choose after the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.
At least three of the candidates — Trump, Clinton, and Sanders — have tried to present themselves as the real New Yorkers (Clinton represented the state as a Senator and Sanders was born in Brooklyn), but polls show New Yorkers regard Trump, who was born in Queens, as the local man.
Polls close at 9 pm Eastern Time. Both Clinton and Trump are expected to preen in victory even though messy days lie ahead. Clinton left the city for Washington DC after voting in the morning, but she is expected to return in the evening for a primary night party hosted by her campaign at a Times Square hotel here she will deliver a victory speech.
And Bernie Sanders? He’s off to Pennsylvania, one of five states that votes a week from today, in the hope that he can still turn the tables.