It was a big night for Donald Trump who swept all five contests today, most of them by margins of at least 60% of the vote. Hillary Clinton will come away winning 4 of the 5 contests on the Democratic side, with Bernie Sanders pulling out a victory in Rhode Island. See the full breakdown of results available here.
Report on Trump’s victories from the New York Times:
Donald J. Trump crushed his Republican opponents in Pennsylvania, Maryland and three other states on Tuesday, a sweep that put him considerably closer to capturing the party’s presidential nomination outright, while Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware and was battling to amass enough delegates to put the Democratic nomination within her reach as early as mid-May.
Though Mr. Trump was widely expected to dominate the primaries, his margins of victory intensified the aura of inevitability around his bid to lead the Republicans, and created urgent new challenges for his rivals. More significant, they increased his chances of avoiding a fight on the floor of the party’s convention in July and of claiming the nomination on the delegates’ first ballot.
The other Republican candidates, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, fared so poorly on Tuesday that they were likely to lose most of the 118 bound delegates up for grabs across the Northeast. Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware also went for Mr. Trump.
As noted, Trump was expected to win all of these races, the question was by what margin which will determine the delegate haul. It now appears Trump might take 100 or more delegates from the night which pushes him closer to convention for a first-round victory at the RNC convention in July.
Here is Trump’s victory speech from earlier tonight at his headquarters in New York City. The audio was cutting out during his speech which appeared to be coming from the event itself since the same issue was happening while watching it on television:
Here is Hillary’s victory speech from earlier tonight, delivered at a campaign event in Philadelphia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbIXmXK10UA
Just minutes ago, Clinton was declared the winner in Connecticut giving her 4 victories. Here’s a report on the Democratic side from USAToday:
Hillary Clinton was declared the winner in the Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware primaries by news organizationsTuesday night as she was poised to put the Democratic nomination mathematically out of reach for Sen. Bernie Sanders.
But Sanders was the winner in Rhode Island, and he made clear he is not getting out of the race. Shortly after Clinton was declared the Maryland winner, Sanders told a West Virginia rally that he expects to win that state’s May 10 primary and that general election polls show him as a stronger candidate against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton.
“The reason that we are generating this enthusiasm is because we are doing something very unusual in contemporary American politics,” Sanders said. “We are telling the truth,” he said, without mentioning Clinton by name during an extended version of his stump speech.
Clinton, speaking to a crowd in Philadelphia, made a direct appeal Sanders’ progressive backers, stressing all of the areas of agreement among Democrats and saying she wants to speak to those “who feel beaten down, left out and left behind.”
Hillary is amassing a large pledged delegate lead which will be further augmented by tonight’s victories. Sanders is heading into a tough stretch given that he is now mathematically eliminated from any chance of earning enough pledged delegates to win the nomination. Most analysts expect him to continue in the primary until June despite the grim delegate math.
