Trump and Clinton Win Big on Super Tuesday

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton took home huge victories on Super Tuesday, cementing their positions as frontrunners of their respective primaries.

Super Tuesday is always considered a crucial day in both the Republican and Democratic primary calendars. This campaign cycle, however, the twelve states that held their nominating contests on March 1st broke decisively for two candidates and may have effectively set each party’s frontrunner on inevitable paths toward their respective nominations.

Though twelve states cast their votes, there were only eleven for each party; Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia made their choices in both parties, while Colorado held their contest for Democrats and Alaska held theirs for Republicans. The day’s south-heavy lineup led to it being dubbed the March 1st “SEC primary”, a day that will now live in infamy for the candidates in both parties.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz had been hailing March 1st as the most important day of his campaign from the earliest stages of the race. The Texas Senator was confident that he’d be able to win his home state and use his strong evangelical, constitutional and military appeal in the other states across the south. Widely considered the champion of principled conservatism, Cruz was expected to steamroll his way through the numerous states that resembled his home state of Texas in their electorate and key issues.

What he never saw coming was Donald Trump. Though the real-estate mogul has struggled at times to present his self-declared spirituality to the voters, including a now infamous moment in a speech at Liberty University where he referred to the Bible verse Second Corinthians as “Two Corinthians”, Trump has run rampant with the evangelical voters that Cruz once considered his base. In previous cycles, the thought of a wealthy, New York businessman sweeping the south would have been laughed off by any prudent political operative, but that is exactly what Super Tuesday has delivered.

Among the seven southern states that cast their votes in the Republican primary on Tuesday, Trump triumphed in five of them; Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and Arkansas. He won commandingly in the first three states but had to work a little harder to eke out wins over Rubio and Cruz in Virginia and Arkansas respectively. However, the billionaire businessman was just able to defeat Virginia’s strong Republican establishment population and Cruz’s near-home state advantage in Arkansas to ensure his dominance in the south. He also took Massachusetts and Vermont in big wins to continue his series of New England victories. He also managed to steal the headlines through a series of high-profile endorsements including Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, Maine Gov. Paul LePage, and, most importantly, ex-presidential candidate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Though Ted Cruz’s southern firewall was effectively dismantled, he managed to scrap his way to three important wins. He thumped Trump in his home state of delegate-rich Texas and battled to more tightly contested wins in neighboring Oklahoma and distant Alaska. The triumphs gave Sen. Cruz a chance to continue to push the narrative that he is the only viable alternative to Donald Trump.

Marco Rubio had a very difficult night. The Florida senator failed to win in establishment-haven Virginia and only managed a single victory in the Minnesota caucuses, his first victory at all so far this primary season. Though the GOP establishment has firmly settled itself behind Marco Rubio as their preferred choice, his consistent ,  at the polls has continued to plague the senator’s campaign. Rubio came after Trump very aggressively in the weeks preceding Super Tuesday in a series of attacks, all to little avail in the end.

John Kasich and Ben Carson, truth be told, played solely the role of spoilers. Though Kasich was within three percentage points of Trump in Vermont, his 9% of more moderate voters in Virginia could have been enough to propel Rubio past Trump in the state. Carson helped Trump in Arkansas, where his 5% of mostly evangelical voters could have put Ted Cruz over the top into a victory. As a result of finishing fifth in almost every state, Carson suspended his campaign on Friday, though Kasich persists in his efforts to win the nomination.

Trump now has 329 delegates of the 1,237 needed to win the nomination, opening up a sizable gap between himself and Ted Cruz (231) and Marco Rubio (110). Some Republicans, including Mitt Romney in a speech to the University of Utah on Friday, have said that a brokered convention could be the only way to stop Trump’s rise in a manner that hasn’t been seen in decades.

The Democratic race was just as disparate on Super Tuesday. Hillary Clinton was always the favorite in the south due to her dominance among African-American voters that make up a large part of the electorate. However, Sen. Bernie Sanders hoped to channel his populist, barnstorming campaign into energetic victories in five states that he targeted most closely; Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and his home state of Vermont.

The democratic-socialist managed to pull out victories in four of those states; he fell short in Massachusetts by just one percent. However, he just pipped Clinton in Colorado, Minnesota, and Oklahoma and delivered a thoroughly commanding win in Vermont.

As a whole, though, Super Tuesday was clearly Hillary Clinton’s night. Alabama, Bill Clinton’s, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, delegate-heavy Texas and Virginia all supplanted her strong delegate lead. Though some states were close, the Clinton machine managed to generate wins by as much as sixty percent, blowing her progressive opponent out of the water through her huge black and Hispanic following.

The ex-Secretary of State’s delegate lead over Sen. Sanders puts Trump’s lead to shame. Though she leads by fewer than two hundred delegates through voting, her commanding advantage among superdelegates, Democratic Party insiders and lawmakers that cast their votes at the convention and who are not bound by their state’s results, her total count lies at 1,058 out of the 2,383 needed to win. Sanders sits at just 431 and would need to start to run the table in the coming contests if he is to have a chance at overwhelming Clinton’s massive superdelegate count.

As both frontrunners now look to hold onto their leads, the coming states could make or break their opposition. Perhaps most important of all is the state of Florida, a winner-take-all competition with a high delegate count in the Republican primary. Amid calls from some for Marco Rubio to drop out of the race, he will have to win his home state to keep credibility. However, he trails the bombastic Trump by twenty points in the the latest polls, and Florida could be the nail in Rubio’s coffin.

On the Democratic side, this upcoming Saturday could be Sen. Sanders’ chance to bounce back. Though Clinton will likely win big in Louisiana, Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver has expressed confidence in his candidate’s ability to win in the other three “sweet spot” states for Sanders; Kansas, Nebraska and Maine, all caucus states with mostly white populations. Should he win those states, triumph in embattled Michigan, and go into March 15th swinging, this primary campaign might not be over. However, Clinton will look for a big delegate boost that day in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio, so all things still carefully rest in the balance. Sanders is also now out-raising the Clinton campaign through his online, small donor-based funding and has promised to stay in the race until the convention.

Regardless of what happens in either party as the calendar moves forward, Super Tuesday has seriously tilted both the Republican and Democratic primaries toward the frontrunners, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Their seemingly insurmountable delegate leads continue to grow, but plenty of states are left in each primary and anything could yet happen.

Iowa and New Hampshire: The Democrats

The Democratic primary has become a battle for the soul of the party itself. (Photo from AP)

The Democratic primary was never expected to be much of a contest; more wise as a result of her stinging loss in 2008 to Barack Obama and more experienced due to her time as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was expected to run the table and lead a united Democratic Party into a successful general election against whoever the Republicans selected.

Some also-rans threw their hat into the ring; former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee tried and failed to gain any traction in the race. What nobody saw coming, however, was the rise of a 73-year-old self-described democratic socialist as the sole serious challenger to a Clinton coronation.

Through mega-rallies attended by thousands of supporters, a small-dollar fundraising organization that is staying neck and neck with some Super PACS, a vast army of volunteers, and a principled, iron-willed message of fighting income inequality, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders catapulted himself to the forefront of American politics.

Iowa and New Hampshire were considered absolutely vital to the Sanders campaign. Both heavily states were saturated with the senator’s main demographic of white liberals, but their historic significance meant that victories in one or both states would validate the legitimacy of Sanders’ threat as someone who could really win.

Iowa was the first test. In 2008, Clinton was dealt a stunning third-place finish in the state while then-upstart Sen. Barack Obama surged to victory, which ultimately set the tone for a long campaign in which Clinton eventually sunk while Obama ascended to the nomination and the White House. On top of the negative history, a Des Moines Register poll showed 43% of Iowans who considered themselves Democrats also considered themselves socialists, which perhaps gave Sen. Sanders the advantage.

What Sanders needed most of all, however, was high turnout. Obama only won the Iowa Caucus 8 years ago because of the incredible get-out-the-vote effort his campaign conducted, which led to a massive record of over 240,000 Iowans participating in the Democratic caucus. If more people turned out, Sanders, the pundits suggested, would win; if they did not, the Clinton campaign’s immense infrastructure and deep ground-game would surely triumph.

What ensued was the tightest Democratic caucus in the state’s history. By a final vote of 49.8% to 49.6%, Clinton eked out an unbelievably slim electoral victory. However, it was Sanders that really emerged with the momentum; by basically tying Sec. Clinton, he showed he could truly compete to win and that he had a motivated, potent voter base.

While Iowa was a dead heat, the Sanders campaign hoped that New Hampshire would be a blowout. Like fellow liberal Vermonter Howard Dean, Sanders hoped that he could turn his neighboring-state advantage and appeal to white liberals to surge his way to a thorough victory and had been dominating the polls in the build-up to the primary.

However, history had always been kind to the Clinton family; despite finishing in 2nd in 1992, Bill Clinton managed to outdo expectations by so much that he labeled himself the “Comeback Kid”. The nickname stuck, and the charismatic Democrat worked his way to the nomination. In 2008, after her shock in Iowa, Hillary managed to turn a heartfelt, teary moment at a campaign event in an upset victory that almost turned her campaign back around.

The final results were the antithesis of Iowa’s nigh-impossible to call race; in an outrageous victory, Bernie Sanders thrashed Hillary Clinton by 22 points, garnering no less than 60% of the state’s votes en route to victory. Most unbelievable of all, Sanders defeated Clinton among young women by over 70 points.

The fight for women voters was seriously damaged on the Clinton side by two big-name campaign surrogates; Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright. A famed feminist of the 70’s movement, Steinem managed to seriously trip up in a speech in which she claimed that young women were only supporting Bernie because “that’s where the boys are”. This came on the heels of a comment from former Secretary of State Albright, the first woman to hold the position, that there is “a special place in Hell” for women that don’t support each other.

Clinton’s aura of inevitability has been vanishing all campaign long, and New Hampshire was another major blow. Between the momentum of the Sanders surge and the pressure of her private email scandal continuing to build, the establishment favorite will have some work to do to seal up the nomination.

However, things aren’t all doom and gloom for the ex-senator of New York and Secretary of State. Clinton maintains much better polling among African-Americans and Hispanics, key voting blocs in the Democratic coalition, and maintains a very strong lead in South Carolina. Her debate prowess is also coming to the fore in the latest one-on-one clashes with Sanders, especially in the area of foreign policy.

Despite these positives, the latest polls show Sanders in a 45-45 dead heat with the Secretary in Nevada, the fourth early state, and gaining at an unprecedented rate nationally. In fact, the last Quinnipiac poll found the senator trailing by merely 2%, 44-42, a massive jump that has only amped up the pressure on the front-runner.

As more states begin to officially cast their ballots and caucus for their candidates, the staying power of Sanders and the resilience of Clinton will be put to the test. The delegate math will be complex, and the battle for the nomination will be long and hard-fought. Whether Bernie Sanders rides his populist momentum all the way to the nomination or Hillary Clinton manages to compose her campaign and regain control of the Democratic Party’s base remains to be seen, but it is certain that this primary contest will be a glorious struggle for the heart of the party itself.

Iowa and New Hampshire: The GOP

Anti-establishment candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have won the first contests in New Hampshire and Iowa respectively. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown, Andrew Harrer/Getty Images)

After months of relentless campaigning, the first two states have finally spoken and primary season is officially underway. The Republican field especially has been hard hit by Iowa and New Hampshire; what began as an unprecedented free-for-all between 17 candidates has been narrowed down to just six. In this article, the focus will be put on those seven candidates, how they’ve fared in the two early states, and their paths (or lack thereof) to the nomination.

The famed Iowa Caucus kicked off official voting on February 1st, where a record 180,000 Republicans turned out to caucus for their respective candidates. Having completed the “full Grassley” of visiting all 99 of Iowa’s counties and relying on Iowa’s powerful evangelical electorate, Ted Cruz smashed his way to victory with 28% of the vote, defeating Donald Trump (24%) and a surprisingly resurgent Marco Rubio (23%).

The victory did not come without controversy, however; Ted Cruz precinct captains were accused of misinforming caucus-goers that Ben Carson, who finished 4th with 9% of the vote, had dropped out of the race and that Ted Cruz was the only religious stalwart left.

Though Cruz certainly impressed with his victory, many pundits are still waiting before announcing the Texas senator as a frontrunner; Iowa has a history of supporting insurgent evangelicals, such as Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012, that do not have a strong enough appeal across the rest of the country to win the nomination.

Trump, though gracious in his concession speech, was certainly irate over his defeat. There was a fear among establishment Republicans that a Trump victory in Iowa would legitimize his aura of invincibility and carry him on a sweep across the primaries to win the nomination. It seems skipping the debate before the caucus cost the billionaire dearly, as he barely even finished in second place.

The real story of the night was Marco Rubio; the Florida senator had been polling around 16% in the state according to RealClearPolitics.org but managed to finish with a whopping 23%, almost eclipsing even Donald Trump. Much of the GOP establishment began lining up behind Rubio after the results; many see him as young enough to espouse generational change and moderate enough to unite the party and win the general election in the face of the right-wing rhetoric of Trump and Cruz.

As soon as the caucus was officially called, however, the focus shifted immediately to New Hampshire. The first-in-the-nation primary had been dominated in the polls by Trump, still reeling from his loss in Iowa, but was also the last hope of the moderates in the race looking to gain some momentum; the governors especially were hoping for strong finishes, with Ohio Gov.John Kasich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush holding countless events in the state.

Just three days before the primary, Fox News hosted a Saturday night debate as a final chance for the candidates to acquit themselves before New Hampshire voters. It was a generally unremarkable night, aside from one catastrophic performance in the form of Marco Rubio. The senator repeated the same line on Barack Obama four times verbatim, drawing intense fire from Chris Christie for being over-rehearsed, robotic, and using memorized 25-second speeches instead of real solutions. The mistake showed in the final results, as Rubio slumped to a 5th place finish with just 10%.

Donald Trump emerged with a blowout victory, garnering 35% of the vote and leaving his closest competitor, John Kasich, almost 20 points behind. Despite ignoring the usual rules of retail politics and getting to know the people on the ground, Trump managed to translate his super-rallies into electoral success and now goes into the remaining states with great confidence and momentum.

Aside from Trump, it was Kasich that stole the show. The Ohio governor is the most moderate Republican in the field, touting his balancing of the budget in the 90’s and his expansion of Medicare in Ohio on moral grounds. He campaigned almost exclusively in New Hampshire, ignoring Iowa almost completely, and it paid off; Kasich’s surprise second-placed finish has put him squarely in the role of the electable moderate with executive experience.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks at the First in the Nation Republican Leadership Conference in Nashua, New Hampshire April 18, 2015. (Photo by Bryan Snyder/REUTERS)

Though Cruz managed a decent 3rd place with 12%, it was Jeb Bush that was the final headline-maker with a resurgent 4th place finish that showed the original establishment favorite still displaying signs of life. More important than Bush’s 11% showing, however, was that he managed to defeat fellow Floridian Marco Rubio (10%), still reeling after his stumbling debate performance, and fellow moderate Gov. Chris Christie (7%), who dropped out of the race after the results were finalized.

After these two bruising contests, the Republican field has been winnowed down to just six; three outsiders and three establishment picks.

In the outsider, lane, only one actual politician remains in the form of Texan Sen. Ted Cruz, locked in combat with Donald Trump for the anti-Washington vote. Though retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson remains in the race for now, his poll numbers are flagging, and Cruz and Trump’s victories in Iowa and New Hampshire have put them in control of the outsider lane.

On the establishment side, however, all three candidates are fighting a bloody primary to win the support of the party’s more moderate, historic wing, and nobody yet seems a clear favorite. Marco Rubio’s Iowa fightback made him seem the early favorite, but Kasich’s powerful New Hampshire showing and Jeb Bush’s resilience have kept them both in the conversation as well. Bush especially has amped up the pressure on his opponents, with his Super PAC pouring millions of dollars into negative advertising on his fellow Floridian, Rubio, and now Kasich as well.

With Iowa and New Hampshire having spoken, however, a fear for many Americans undeniably remains true; billionaire businessman Donald Trump remains the heavy favorite for the Republican nomination. Though his delegate lead is still nominal, Trump continues to dominate the polls in most states across America, and in the polls he leads his closest competitor, Ted Cruz, by 17 points in the next state to vote; South Carolina.

However, the state is well-known as a viper’s nest, especially for the GOP; blitzes of negative ads will surely shower the South Carolina as Trump looks to hold his lead, Cruz touts his southern credibility, and Jeb Bush pulls out his brother and ex-candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to stump for him, both extremely popular figures in the state.

Though the first two contests have massively changed the complexion of the GOP race, a long, slug-fest of a primary still lays ahead, and though Trump remains the frontrunner, in this highly charged political climate, anything is possible in the months ahead.