Trump wins big on Super Tuesday, but rivals fight on


Businessman Donald Trump walked away from Super Tuesday with a strengthened claim to the GOP nomination, but both of his chief national rivals notched wins that will most likely propel them onto the next series of contests.

Trump was the projected winner of GOP primaries in Virginia, Vermont, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Massachusetts and Alabama, NBC News reported.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, won Oklahoma and his home state of Texas, NBC projected. And U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was the projected winner of the Minnesota GOP caucus. Alaska, the final of the 11 states holding GOP contests on Tuesday, was too close to call, NBC News said just after midnight ET.

In a Tuesday night address, Trump struck a general election tone, saying he has expanded the Republican party's voter base and hitting Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in his speech.

"I am a unifier, I know people are going to find that a little bit hard to believe, but believe me that I am a unifier," Trump said. "Once we get all of this finished, I am going to go after one person — that's Hillary Clinton."

"When we unify, there's nobody — nobody — that's going to beat us," he said at the conclusion of his victory speech.

Real estate magnate Trump was the favorite to win all but the Texas primary during the March 1 contests, according to betting markets and recent state polls. Trump has led nearly every recent national GOP poll, and he secured the most Republican delegates ahead of Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaign ahead of Super Tuesday.
Super Tuesday takeaways: Winners, losers & questions
Texas's Cruz, who won the first GOP test of the year when he defeated Trump in the Iowa caucus, had been banking on a Texas victory to help maintain his campaign's momentum after successive losses in Nevada, South Carolina and New Hampshire.

"I believe we're going to do very very well here in Texas," Cruz said earlier Tuesday. "It's going to be up to Texans to make their decision, but there is no doubt that any candidate who cannot win his home state has real problems."

That comment may have been directed at GOP hopeful Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, who trails Donald Trump by double digits in Sunshine State polls. Florida doesn't vote until March 15, but Rubio has yet to record a win during the primary season, so his campaign is hoping to build up some steam before that contest.

An apparent favorite of Republican leadership, Rubio had yet to turn endorsements and big donations into outright state victories before Tuesday — although he had won 16 delegates going into the day, compared to Cruz's 17. For his part, Trump entered Super Tuesday with 82 delegates.

"I know it was a very tough night for Marco Rubio — he had a tough night," Trump said in a Tuesday evening address. "We're going to go to Florida, we're going to spend so much time in Florida."

The states holding the GOP's delegate-binding contests on Tuesday were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. There were 595 Republican delegates up for grabs in those tests.

Also in the race are Ohio Gov. John Kasich — the second-place finisher in New Hampshire who pundits say is competing with Rubio in the GOP's so-called establishment track — and retired surgeon Ben Carson. The former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital has seen his campaign's fortunes steadily eroding after challenging Trump as national front-runner in November.

Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
Sanders surprises with 4 projected wins: NBC News
Early exit polls showed that the GOP contests in Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia had the lowest percentage of voters identifying as very conservative, according to NBC News. Overall, 38 percent of voters in Super Tuesday GOP primaries said they identified as very conservative, 42 percent as somewhat conservative, 18 percent as moderate and 2 percent as liberal.

About 42 percent of Super Tuesday Republican primary voters said they had made their decision about which candidate to vote for more than a month ago, according to early exit poll data from NBC News. That data also showed that 22 percent made up their minds in the last few days, another 10 percent in the last week, and another 24 percent in the last month.

Other early exit poll results indicated that Republican primary voters are split on their ideal candidate's background: 50 percent said they want the next president to come from outside the establishment, and 40 percent said they wanted someone with political experience.

On the proposition of a ban on Muslims, 85 percent of Trump voters in the GOP's Super Tuesday primaries said they support the measure, but that fell to 60 percent for other Republican candidates' voters, according to NBC News early exit polls.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/01/super-tuesday-gop-results-latest-news.html

Trump vs Hillary

That face tho.

Seriously, this guy is weird.

Whatever happened to humility

#4Hillary

Trump all the way!!!

yes o!!!!! Up Donald Trump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

unfortunately i no fit watch super american primaries on teusday because of lack of light. i don dey sleep in darkness for 3 days now. thunder fire nepa! wetin super thief fashola dey do abt power

As crazy as this guy is,I still like him. He is not following laid down procedures ,just doing his thing his own way

trump vs Hillary, the republican will lead to the downfall of america, by extention the advanceent of nigeria who can make the crazy man see reason?

This battle will end up in the U.S Supreme court.


Trust me on that.

I dont know why cruz would nt step down and support rubio to stop trump from emerging the flag bearer.

Trump's Super Tuesday
The front-runner added to his lead, while Ted Cruz pulled ahead of a faltering Marco Rubio.


POLITICS

They call it Super Tuesday, but for everyone other than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, March 1 wasn’t a great night. The Democratic and Republican frontrunners racked up wins Tuesday, along with delegates, as each consolidated a lead.

Could it have been a better night for either of them? Absolutely. As expected, Clinton lost Vermont to favorite son Bernie Sanders, but she also lost in Oklahoma, Colorado, and Minnesota. Trump was the big winner among the Republicans, but he lost states he was expected to win and saw his margin of victory slip below what polls had predicted in others.

Even as the election results were rolling in, a debate raged over just how good a night it was for Trump. It’s undeniable—despite the protestations of anti-Trump pundits—that winning more states is better than winning fewer. As the clock struck midnight on the east coast, Trump could claim victories in Georgia, Alabama, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arkansas. He even squeezed out a win in Vermont, where John Kasich came in a close second. Proportional-allocation rules for delegates, however, mean that although Trump will win the most delegates, his rivals will also take quite a few. According to New York Times projections, Trump was likely to take more than 200 delegates, trailed by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. That would give Trump more than 400 delegates, but he’s still a long way short of the 1,237 needed to lock up the nomination. The problem for the other candidates, and for the many Republicans who find Trump unacceptable, is that none of his rivals is close to him.

It was a pretty good night for Cruz, who won his home state of Texas and scored a victory in the neighboring state of Oklahoma, too. Or at least it was a good night, scored against the expectations Tuesday morning. It wasn’t that long ago, however, that Cruz’s advocates were touting the many contests in Southern states—the “SEC Primary”—as his firewall, where he would clean up in states heavy on evangelical voters. Judged against those expectations, it was a disappointing evening for the Cruz team. Looking ahead, he faces a stretch of states that aren’t likely to be as friendly to him. Still, Cruz used his remarks in suburban Houston to paint himself as the only hope for stopping Trump.

“God bless the Lone Star State. And God bless the great state of Oklahoma,” Cruz said. “So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump’s path to the nomination remains more likely, and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives, and for the nation. After tonight, we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat, and that will beat Donald Trump.”

Without naming Rubio or John Kasich directly, Cruz called on both of them to leave the race. “The candidates who have not yet won a state, who have not yet won significant delegates, I ask you to prayerfully considered coming together, united,” he said.

As those comments suggested, things were bleaker for Rubio, who had a roller-coaster evening. Early in the night, analysis—or was it wishful thinking?—suggested Rubio might be able to win in Virginia, a state with a high concentration of well-educated, wealthier, establishment-friendly Republicans in Northern Virginia. In the end, though, Rubio couldn’t pull out the win there. The Florida senator finally notched a win in Minnesota late Tuesday—his first victory of the campaign. But in several states, Rubio was in danger of failing to cross the 20-percent threshold the party imposes to win any of the statewide delegates allocated on a proportional basis.

Yet when Rubio came out to speak, early in the night, he once again struck the same triumphant pose he has employed time and again, as his campaign finished second or third in contest after contest. “When I am president of the United States, we will not just save the American dream, we will expand it to more people than ever!” he said.

The most telling moment in his speech, however, came a few moments later. "Five days ago, we began to explain to the American people that Donald Trump is a con artist," Rubio said, alluding to the onslaught of opposition research, insults, and barnyard jokes he has directed at the GOP frontrunner, starting with Thursday’s debate. Why did that take so long, though? It may have been too late to save the Republican Party from Trump, and if it wasn’t, it may have been too late to save Rubio. His case as the Trump alternative depends not on beating Trump outright, but on depriving him of an outright victory with delegates ahead of the Republican convention, then wresting the nomination from him there. Rubio’s moment of truth comes on March 15, when Florida votes. If he can’t win the Sunshine State, his campaign is likely over.

Trump leads in polls there so far, and he taunted Rubio by holding his election-night celebration at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. Backed by a meek Chris Christie, Trump boasted, joked, meandered, argued, and cajoled, taking questions from reporters and taking shots at Rubio. While Trump could have won more states, and he could have won by larger margins, the victories for both Rubio and Cruz mean neither man seems likely to leave the race. So far, division among Republicans has served Trump well.

Sanders called it an early night, capitalizing on his victory in Vermont. He gave a speech that almost sounded like a requiem for his impressive run. “This campaign is not just about electing a president; it is about transforming America,” he said. “It is about making our great country the nation that we know it has the potential to be. It is about dealing with some unpleasant truths that exist in America today and having he guts to confront those truths.”

Yet Sanders aides promised to fight on to the convention, and later results showed that he had won several states. In addition to Oklahoma, Sanders won in Colorado and in Minnesota—a state he’d campaigned in heavily, as he did in the Sooner State. But he lost to Clinton in Massachusetts, another state where he’d concentrated his energies.

Clinton, meanwhile, didn’t quite pull off the clean sweep of non-Vermont states that she’d hoped for, but she scored wins across the South, including in Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas. She is projected to take roughly double Sanders’s delegate total. Clinton has turned her attentions to the general election and to Donald Trump.

“[Our] work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole,” Clinton said. “I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness.” She delivered some fiery lines as well. "If you cheat your employees, exploit consumers, pollute our environment, or rip off the taxpayers we are going to hold you accountable.”

The story of the night remains the Republican side, though, and Trump’s strong showing. As the dust clears Wednesday, there will be renewed calls for both John Kasich and Ben Carson to leave the race. Kasich insists he has no plans to go anywhere until at least the March 15 elections, when he promises to win Ohio and hopes Rubio loses Florida. Pressure on Kasich and Carson to bow out is nothing new. Rubio, however, will have to work hard to prove that he’s still a viable candidate after a not-so-super Tuesday.

—David Graham

11:49 PM ANDREW MCGILLLINK
In an interview with CNN, Ted Cruz calls tonight's results "a winnowing process," but even strong prompting from Wolf Blitzer can't get him to name Marco Rubio in particular—or, for that matter, Kasich or Carson. He remained laser-focused on Trump. "I am the only candidate who has beaten Donald three times," he said. "The path to beating him is for us to unify.”

11:48 PM ELAINE GODFREYLINK
In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Marco Rubio claimed that he wasn't worried about Donald Trump's overwhelming success tonight. Why? Because, Rubio said, the Republican establishment simply won't be throwing its weight behind a candidate as unworthy as Trump. But actually, Ronald Brownstein recently wrote, it might be time for conservatives to recognize Trump as the successful, complex candidate he is: “If Trump can beat Cruz [on Super Tuesday] in heavily blue-collar and evangelical states on one side, and top Kasich and Rubio in white collar, less culturally conservative states on the other, it will grow increasingly daunting for any candidate to coalesce a coalition large enough to stop the front-runner.”

lalasticlala do justice to this. though you hate Trump do the needful.

1 The answer is obvious, isn't it? Diebold corporation voting machines. Evidently you aren't aware of all the fraud in past elections where huge numbers of people who voted Republican mysteriously found that their votes went for the Dem candidate? Don't you find it a bit perplexing that George Bush #2 was reelected in spite of that fact that he couldn't articulate a coherent sentence? Or that Obama was also reelected in spite of how much damage he did during his first term? This reminds me of a quote: " two parties is the minimum needed to give the illusion of choice and the maximum allowable to maintain control". I forget who said it, but it's so true. Besides, it does not matter who you vote for since they are all vetted ahead of time by the Oligarch that rules the country behind the curtain.
As of August 2015, Presidential candidate Donald Trump was 100% pro- death concerning abortion a decade ago, but now mysteriously has become pro-life to run on the conservative Republican ticket. It's all staged. Trump knows he'll never sit in the oval office as our nation's commander. He's not evil enough. It's a puppet position anyway, beneath Trump's caliber. The job of U.S. President has apparently been reserved for pot-smoking, pedophile-pervert, cocaine-using, draft- dodging, lying, satanic, murderous, homosexuals. I think Trump is like World Trade Center building #7 imploded on 9/11, thrown into the mix to add confusion, dissonance and act as a red- herring, to distract everyone.

Pheals:
Trump all the way!!!

I feel you, I hope he wins.