A hometown businessman and a former state senator stole the show in the New York primaries, strolling to victory with ease and adding mass quantities of delegates to their respective political corners.
Together, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton compiled 228 total delegates for their campaigns in the state of New York, with 89 delegates going for the business mogul Trump, and 139 going for Clinton, who served as a state senator in New York from 2000 to 2008.
Nobody could match Trump on the Republican side, as he earned 60.4 percent of the vote statewide. While second in delegate count nationally for conservatives, Texas Senator Ted Cruz turned up no delegates on Tuesday night, finishing third in the primary with just 14.5 percent of the vote. Ohio Governor John Kasich notched four delegates for his campaign with 25.1 percent of the vote.
On the Democratic side, Clinton scooped up the victory by beating out New York native Bernie Sanders by 16 percentage points. Clinton finished with 58 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 42.
The frontrunners of each party finished as well as pundits expected going into the night. Nearly every RealClearPolitics (RCP) poll showed Clinton with a double-digit advantage going into the primary, some showing her advantage as high as 17 points and some showing a winning margin of just six.
Initial RCP polls showed Trump with an average spread of 30.3 percent, though he finished with a 35.3 percent advantage over Kasich.
Despite taking most of the individual counties in New York, Sanders fell to Clinton in the state’s major urban centers with diverse populations. Clinton won only a handful of counties, but the votes she received in Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Buffalo, Staten Island, Rochester and Syracuse were enough for her to take the largest number of delegates. The victory shows Clinton’s popularity among diverse voters in big, affluent states that typically vote Democrat.
Trump won every single county in the state except Manhattan, which narrowly voted in favor of Kasich by a margin of 3.4 percent, or less than 1,000 votes.
With wins by both parties leading candidates, the path to victory looks less likely for Sanders and Cruz. Projections roughly a month ago showed Trump earning roughly 70 delegates in New York, but he made away with 19 more than that in total. If he performs as well as is predicted in the remaining states, he will finish incredibly close to the 1,237 delegate count that he needs to seal the nomination.
For the Clinton campaign, victory is in sight. Clinton only needs to secure 41 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to take her party’s nomination. Clinton has won 55 percent of pledged delegates thus far and has what is likely an insurmountable lead over Sanders in superdelegates. For Sanders to earn the nomination on his own, he would need to win over 59 percent of the remaining delegates, which is a tall order for the trailing candidate.
While it’s nearly impossible for Sanders, Cruz or Kasich to earn their party’s nomination outright, all three candidates hope to win on second ballots at their party’s respective conventions. Only time will tell if it’s financially feasible for any of these campaigns to stay active until the party conventions.
