"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."
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton won commanding victories in New York state's U.S.
presidential nominating contests on Tuesday, recapturing lost campaign
momentum and moving the front-runners closer to their parties'
nominations.
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 U.S. Senate, snapped Democratic rival Bernie Sanders'
winning streak and made it nearly impossible for him to overtake her
delegate lead.
The victories in one of the biggest
state nominating contests so far set up Trump and Clinton for another
round of strong performances next Tuesday, when they are expected to do
well in five other Northeastern state primaries.
Trump captured about 60 percent of the vote, easily beating Ohio Governor John Kasich, who got 25 percent, and U.S. 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
outmaneuver him and win delegates in a series of recent state
conventions.
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, 45, to win the nomination on the first ballot at the party's
national convention in July.
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.
Some establishment
Republicans have been alienated by Trump's more incendiary proposals,
such as building a wall along the border with Mexico and temporarily
banning Muslims from entering the country.
"We have shown the all-talk, no-action politicians that this is a movement that cannot be stopped," Trump said in an email to supporters after his win.
'VICTORY IS IN SIGHT'
Clinton's
New York victory followed some of the most heated personal exchanges of
her political duel with Sanders, a U.S. 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 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,"
Clinton said in a victory speech at a Manhattan hotel that had her
looking toward the Nov. 8 election against the eventual Republican
nominee.
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 criticize the 74-year-old senator 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.
The
New York victory will expand Clinton's lead of 244 pledged delegates
over Sanders, and make it nearly impossible for him to overcome the
deficit and capture the 2,383 delegates needed for the nomination under
Democratic rules that allocate delegates proportionally based on each
state's result.
Sanders headed to Pennsylvania to campaign on Tuesday, and then went home to Vermont for a day off the campaign trail.
The
voting in New York was marred by irregularities, including more than
125,000 people missing from New York City voter rolls. The city has
roughly 4 million voters considered active for the primaries.
New
York City Comptroller Scott Stringer ordered an audit of the city
elections board after it confirmed the names had been removed from voter
rolls. He told the board in a letter it was "consistently disorganized,
chaotic and inefficient."
Addressing supporters at a rally in State College, Pennsylvania, Sanders termed the situation "absurd."
