Donald Trump has been projected as the winner in all five Republican presidential primaries held on Tuesday – a clean sweep that illustrates Trump’s dominance along the Eastern Seaboard.
In the Democratic race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been projected as the winner in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) has been projected as the winner in Rhode Island.
Their victories were all projected by the Associated Press, using exit polls and early returns.
Of the 10 races held on Tuesday – two primaries each in five states – the only race that remain too close to call was the Democratic primary in Connecticut. Sanders was narrowly ahead of Clinton in early returns from that state.
In both parties, these results will extend the front-runner’s advantage in convention delegates. But they are also important as illustrations of momentum.
In the GOP race, Trump appeared to be trouncing his rivals by huge margins, winning by 30 percentage points or more in the first returns. Wins on that scale will make it harder for rivals like Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to argue that Trump is a weak and divisive front-runner.
That idea is key to both men’s long-shot strategies, which imagine that Trump can be stopped from reaching a majority of Republican delegates, and that the party’s convention will bypass the leader and choose one them instead.
Trump was attending the TIME 100 Gala in New York tonight with his wife. Outside, he told a CBS News reporter that he could unify the party after he locks up the GOP nomination: “It has been fractured, but it’ll be amazing how quickly it’ll be unified.”
(c) 2016 The Washington Post
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