WASHINGTON: Conservative mascot Ted Cruz won two of the four states that held party polls on “Super Saturday” to stay alive in a Presidential nomination race that the Republican Party establishment wants to trip Donald Trump in, while on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders also hung in with victories in two of the three states that held primaries.
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Saturday’s results did not significantly change the frontrunner status of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, who both won the delegate-rich state of Louisiana. But it allowed their rivals to hang in a bit longer in the race with a statistical chance of overtaking the leaders to win the party nomination.
Ted Cruz won big in Republican caucuses in Kansas and Maine, while Trump underlined his broader appeal with narrower victories in Louisiana and Kentucky. On the Democratic side, Sanders won Kansas and Nebraska but lost Louisiana.
Clinton won 55 delegates to Sanders’ 47 (despite him winning two of three states) to take their tally to 663 and 457 respectively. To win the Democratic nomination, a candidate must win 2,383 delegates at the national convention. Delegates are awarded roughly proportional to the popular votes secured.
On the Republican side, Trump won 49 delegates and Cruz won 64 delegates after they split four states, taking their delegate count to 378 and 295 respectively. In order to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, a candidate must win 1,237 delegates at the party’s national convention.
The big loser of the day was establishment favorite Senator Marco Rubio, who won only 13 delegates and fell further behind in the race with only 133 delegates.
Cruz took the opportunity of his two-state victory to ask Rubio and John Kasich, the two other Republicans remaining in the race, to drop out so that conservatives could coalesce behind him to take on Trump. “We’ll continue to amass delegates, but the field needs to narrow,” Cruz said. “As long as the field remains divided, it gives Donald an advantage.”
Trump’s message: Bring it on. He said he looks forward to fighting Ted “one-on-one.”
Sanders too fell further behind Clinton despite wins in two states, mainly on account of Clinton’s hold on the African-American vote that has propelled her to big victories in states with large black populations. Clinton also has the support of 90 per cent of the so-called “super-delegates” who are basically party-appointed hacks who can exercise conscience votes instead of expressing grassroots sentiment.
Taking “super-delegates” into account, Clinton leads Sanders 1066 to 432 in the race to the nomination.