Trump, Clinton close in on presidential nominations with New York wins

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton both took major steps towards winning their parties’ respective presidential nominations with commanding victories in the New York state primary on Tuesday.

The billionaire businessman’s huge victory in his home state put Trump in position to win nearly all of the state’s 95 delegates, edging closer to the 1,237 delegates needed to win his party’s presidential nomination and avoid a contested national convention in July.

Clinton’s dominating double-digit primary election win in New York, which she once represented in the US Senate, snapped Democratic rival Bernie Sanders’s winning streak and made it nearly impossible for him to overtake her delegate lead.

Trump captured about 60 percent of the vote, easily beating Ohio Governor John Kasich, who got 25 percent, and US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who had 15 percent, with 95 percent of the votes counted. For Trump, it was enough to win all 14 statewide delegates and most of the delegates from each of New York’s congressional districts.

“We don’t have much of a race anymore based on what I’m seeing on television,” Trump, 69, told cheering supporters at a victory party at his Trump Tower in Manhattan. “We are really, really rocking."

He said the Republican Party establishment forces that have tried to keep him from a first-ballot victory at the convention are “in trouble” and repeated his criticism of a “crooked” system that has allowed Cruz to outmanoeuvre him and win delegates in a series of recent state conventions.

Trump looks to wrap up nomination before convention

Trump entered the New York contest with 756 delegates, while Cruz had 559 and Kasich had 144, according to an Associated Press count. The count includes endorsements from several delegates who are free to support the candidate of their choice.

Trump said his New York win would make it almost mathematically impossible for Cruz to win the nomination on the first ballot at the party’s national convention in July.

His resounding victory was a significant, though not unexpected, blow to Cruz’s campaign.

The Texas Senator, who has projected himself as the only Republican capable of beating Trump, is widely disliked across the state for insulting New York's supposedly non-conservative values earlier in the campaign.

The 45-year-old gave his primary night speech in Philadelphia, where he was already focused on running in Pennsylvania. He called on Republicans to unite around his candidacy.

Cruz is trying to stay close enough in the delegate count to push the Republican race to a contested convention.

If Trump cannot secure enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot at the July 18-21 conclave in Cleveland, delegates would be allowed to switch to other candidates.

Cruz's campaign feels confident that it has mastered the complicated process of lining up individual delegates who could shift their support to the Texas senator if the convention vote goes to a second round.

“There’s only two issues left for Republicans: Will Trump get 50 percent of the delegates prior to Cleveland, and if not, how close will he be? New York gives him a nice boost, but it will take weeks before we know the answer,” said Ari Fleischer, who was White House press secretary under President George W Bush.

Clinton: ‘Victory is in sight’

Clinton’s New York victory followed some of the most heated personal exchanges of her political duel with Sanders, a US Senator from Vermont and Brooklyn native who had won seven of the last eight state-by-state nominating contests.

“The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight,” Clinton, 68, told a cheering, chanting crowd at a victory speech at a Manhattan hotel, noting that she had gained more than 10 million votes and won in every region of the country.

“Today you proved there is no place like home,” added the former New York senator and first lady.

She reached out to Sanders supporters in what has become an increasingly antagonistic campaign. “There is much more that unites us than divides us,” she said.

But Clinton also could not resist a dig at her rival, repeating language she has used recently to criticise the 74-year-old for offering vague policy ideas without a concrete explanation of how he would achieve them.

“In the bright lights of New York we have seen it’s not enough to diagnose problems; you have to explain how you actually solve them,” she said.

Clinton won 57.9 percent of the vote in New York to 42.1 for Sanders, CNN said based on more than 90 percent of precincts.

With 247 delegates at stake, Clinton will pick up at least 135. Sanders will win at least 104. Eight remain to be allocated pending final vote tallies.

Based on primaries and caucuses to date, Clinton now has 1,911 delegates and superdelegates to Sanders's 1,229, according to a New York Times tally, with 2,383 needed to win.

Sanders needs to win 71 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates if he still hopes to win the nomination.

A top adviser to Bernie Sanders says the senator still has a path to the Democratic presidential nomination but will need to perform well in primary contests next week.

A senior adviser to Sanders, Tad Devine, said the senator was still in the race despite Clinton’s New York victory.

Sanders "never counted on winning New York - this is her home state”, he told the Associated Press.

There are "still a pretty good number of delegates left. We have to win most of the states. We have to win enough delegates to make up the difference”, he added.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)