Over break, candidates on both sides of the isle faced off in key, delegate-rich primary and caucus states—including Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Arizona, and Washington. The results have surprised pundits as the front-runners in both the Democratic and Republican parties struggle to wrap up their respective nominations.
On the Democratic side, Sanders was powerful in caucus states, winning all five that voted by wide margins. But he is about to run out of caucuses. Clinton’s delegate lead is probably insurmountable at this point. She picked up all five March 15 primary states and also won Arizona on March 22. For Democrats, the next big primary state is Wisconsin, which both candidates think they can win. Then it’s onto New York, a closed primary which Clinton represented in the U.S. senate.
On the Republican side, the #NeverTrump effort has seemingly fallen flat. In Florida, anti-Trump groups spent millions in TV ads and on the airwaves to stop Trump from carrying the winner-take-all state. The Our Principles PAC aired TV ads with women reading real quotes that Trump has said about women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKmhK8G–7c
The ad was powerful, but ultimately ineffective. Trump won with Florida women, garnering 40 percent of their support to Rubio’s 33 percent. Trump handily lost Cuban and Hispanic voters, who favored Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Trump ultimately won the Florida primary by nearly 19 points, netting all 99 delegates and ousting Rubio from the presidential race.
Yet it is not entirely clear Trump will hit the magic 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination before the convention. Here at Brimmer, some conservative voters are reconsidering their support for Trump, switching to other candidates such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
“A couple days before the Massachusetts primary, Trump took longer than needed to disavow the Duke of the KKK,” said Nate Freidman ’16. “It is extremely hard to support a candidate who couldn’t disavow the KKK’s support right away. The day of the primary, I was confused. The candidate I had been supporting for months didn’t make any sense to support anymore, so I turned to Ted Cruz.”
For your funny bone, here is a “debate” between Mr. Trump and himself, hosted by Stephen Colbert.
