New York voters delivered the expected results today: a huge victory for Donald Trump and a solid showing for Hillary Clinton. Trump is winning by a large enough margin in all regions of New York to take the overwhelming share of delegates. He’s set to sweep every county in the state except for his home turf of Manhattan, where John Kasich led the early returns. Ted Cruz had to settle for third behind Kasich statewide. Over the past month he has whittled Trump’s delegate lead down, but tonight’s results are a blow to his hopes for keeping Trump below the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination.
Bernie Sanders carried quite a few upstate counties but Clinton crushed him in the five boroughs of New York City. She will add to her pledged delegate lead as well as her popular vote lead–which is symbolically important, even though delegates will determine the nominee. According to Tom Snee, Clinton rose to 90 cents on the Iowa politics prediction market after today’s primary; Sanders fell to 7 cents.
Several factors were working against Sanders today, besides the fact that Clinton represented this state in the U.S. Senate. As a group, New York Democrats are less white than Democrats in the states Sanders has been winning. Also, New York has a “closed” primary, meaning that independents were not able to change their registration. In several states, including Michigan, independent voters provided Sanders’ margin of victory. I prefer open primaries, though there is a case for allowing voters with a stake in a political party decide that party’s nominee.
What’s indefensible: New York has neither early voting nor same-day voter registration. Same-day registration alone is estimated to increase turnout by about 10 percent. Early voting would also boost participation in a state that has had some of the lowest turnout rates in the country in recent elections. New York Controller Scott Stringer offered other recommendations for making voting more accessible.
Excerpts from the Trump and Clinton victory speeches are after the jump. Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread.
Trump was like a caricature of himself boasting about “winning” at his final rally in Buffalo on April 18. But he struck a different tone during his victory speech soon after polls closed tonight:
It is really nice to win the delegates with the votes. You know, it is really nice. […] Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they get those delegates with voters and voting. And that is what is going on.
And you watch, because the people aren’t going to stand for it. It is a crooked system. It is rigged and we are going to go back to the old way — it is called ‘You vote, you win.’
No matter what happens, and I think we are going to get so strong over the next couple of weeks.
Patricia Engel commented that a “different Donald Trump” showed up.
There was no “Lyin’ Ted.” No “Crooked Hillary.” No steak.
An apparently subdued Donald Trump delivered a raucous victory speech at New York City’s Trump Tower after winning the state’s Republican primary.
When referring to his chief rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump ditched his favored moniker — “Lyin’ Ted” — instead calling him “Senator Cruz.”
Many political observers noted the switch.
During his speech, Trump took shots at Cruz — but refrained from his typical insults.
“Sen. Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated,” Trump said. “And we’ve won another state.”
Appearing on MSNBC tonight, Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver was still talking about taking the fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention. Although it’s almost mathematically impossible that Sanders could take a pledged delegate lead between now and June 7, Weaver suggested that superdelegates (who now strongly favor Clinton) might change their minds in light of opinion polls that show Sanders performing better against prospective Republican nominees. Good luck with that after months of railing against the Democratic establishment and the rigged system.
Clinton sounded like a general election candidate tonight: “The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight.” Although she didn’t talk directly about Sanders in her speech to New York supporters, she did reach out to his fans after thanking her own:
Today you proved once again there’s no place like home. You know, in this campaign we’ve won in every region of the country, from the north to the south to the east to the west, but this one’s personal. […]
And to all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe that there is much more than unites us than divides us.
Clinton also warned that Trump and Cruz were promoting a “dangerous” vision of America.