Call it panic day for the Republican establishment: GOP front-runner Donald Trump is expected to tighten his grip on the party’s nomination on Tuesday, the most important day yet in the 2016 election.
Both Republicans and Democrats are facing off on Super Tuesday, a group of more than a dozen primaries and caucuses. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia will hold primaries for both parties. Alaska will hold a GOP caucus, and American Samoa will caucus for Democrats. Colorado will also hold a caucus for both parties, but Republicans have chosen not to hold a straw poll, so GOP delegates will decide at the national convention.
And it’s possible Trump could win as many as 10 Super Tuesday contests.
Predictions from the search engine Bing have Trump and Clinton each sweeping all Super Tuesday states except the home states of their chief rivals. Republican candidate Ted Cruz is expected to take Texas, and Democrat candidate Bernie is likely to win Vermont.
Even Trump’s GOP rivals are expecting a big night for the billionaire.
“Nobody’s going to win but Trump,” Republican candidate John Kasich told CNN on Thursday.
“Right now, Donald Trump has enormous momentum,” Cruz said Friday. “If he continues with that momentum and powers through and wins everywhere on Super Tuesday, he could easily be unstoppable.”
Trump and Clinton are dominating their respective races, according to a CNN poll that has Trump scoring 49 percent of the primary vote and Clinton grabbing 55 percent.
“On Tuesday, you have a big day,” Trump said at a Tennessee rally on Saturday, urging his supporters to vote even if they are dying or their spouses suddenly decided to dump them.
“You get up, you go to the polls, and you vote!” he said. “I promise you, that you are going to look back on this night and you are going to say this was a very important night … a very important evening in your life.”
Also, Trump has a lock on Georgia and Tennessee, while Cruz is leading in Texas – Super Tuesday’s “crown jewel” with 155 delegates – according to a trio of new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls.
The polls’ Georgia results are as follows: Trump, 30; Cruz, 23; Marco Rubio, 23; Ben Carson, 9; John Kasich, 9.
Tennessee results: Trump, 40; Cruz, 22; Rubio, 19; Carson, 9; Kasich, 6.
And in Texas: Cruz, 39; Trump, 26; Rubio, 16; Carson, 8; Kasich, 6.
While Cruz has a solid lead in Texas, his make-or-break moment comes Tuesday.
“If Cruz doesn’t win Texas, it’s game over for him,” Phillip Stutts, a Republican political consultant, told CNN. “Rubio doesn’t doesn’t have to win, but Cruz has to.”
Rubio won’t face his must-win home state primary in Florida until March 15. After that date, states will begin assigning delegates on a winner-take-all basis.
If Trump manages to build a strong delegate lead before March 15, first-place finishes in winner-take-all primaries such as Florida and Ohio could give him the Republican nomination.
For Republicans, 595 delegates are at stake in 11 states. For Democrats, there are 865 delegates in a dozen states. To win their party nominations, GOP candidates need 1,237 delegates, and Democrats need 2,383.
Democrat front-runner Hillary Clinton is expected to bring in at least 200 more delegates than Bernie Sanders on Tuesday, as polls show Clinton with solid leads in the South. The following fives states are said to be securely in Clinton’s camp: Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas and Virginia. Sanders will have a better shot in Vermont, Minnesota, Colorado and Massachusetts. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver says Sanders must do well in Oklahoma and Tennessee to stay in the running for the nomination.
Even if Sanders performs well, he may still face insurmountable odds against Clinton. That’s because 712 of the 4,763 delegates who vote at the Democratic Party convention are superdelegates – establishment insiders who are free to lend their support to the candidate of their choice irrespective of the vote. As WND reported earlier this month, despite being the victim of a popular vote landslide in the New Hampshire primary, Clinton was actually the winner when it came to the number of delegates earned.
Super Tuesday results are expected to begin arriving by 8 p.m. EST, after polls close in Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and Vermont. The latest results will come early Wednesday, as the Alaska and Wyoming caucuses close after 12 p.m. EST.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/gop-panic-will-trump-steamroll-through-super-tuesday/
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