They call it Super Tuesday, but for everyone other than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, March 1 wasn’t a great night. The Democratic and Republican frontrunners racked up wins Tuesday, along with delegates, as each consolidated a lead.
Could it have been a better night for either of them? Absolutely. As expected, Clinton lost Vermont to favorite son Bernie Sanders, but she also lost in Oklahoma, Colorado, and Minnesota. Trump was the big winner among the Republicans, but he lost states he was expected to win and saw his margin of victory slip below what polls had predicted in others.
Even as the election results were rolling in, a debate raged over just how good a night it was for Trump. It’s undeniable—despite the protestations of anti-Trump pundits—that winning more states is better than winning fewer. As the clock struck midnight on the east coast, Trump could claim victories in Georgia, Alabama, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arkansas. He even squeezed out a win in Vermont, where John Kasich came in a close second. Proportional-allocation rules for delegates, however, mean that although Trump will win the most delegates, his rivals will also take quite a few. According to New York Times projections, Trump was likely to take more than 200 delegates, trailed by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. That would give Trump more than 400 delegates, but he’s still a long way short of the 1,237 needed to lock up the nomination. The problem for the other candidates, and for the many Republicans who find Trump unacceptable, is that none of his rivals is close to him.
It was a pretty good night for Cruz, who won his home state of Texas and scored a victory in the neighboring state of Oklahoma, too. Or at least it was a good night, scored against the expectations Tuesday morning. It wasn’t that long ago, however, that Cruz’s advocates were touting the many contests in Southern states—the “SEC Primary”—as his firewall, where he would clean up in states heavy on evangelical voters. Judged against those expectations, it was a disappointing evening for the Cruz team. Looking ahead, he faces a stretch of states that aren’t likely to be as friendly to him. Still, Cruz used his remarks in suburban Houston to paint himself as the only hope for stopping Trump.
“God bless the Lone Star State. And God bless the great state of Oklahoma,” Cruz said. “So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump’s path to the nomination remains more likely, and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives, and for the nation. After tonight, we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat, and that will beat Donald Trump.”
Without naming Rubio or John Kasich directly, Cruz called on both of them to leave the race. “The candidates who have not yet won a state, who have not yet won significant delegates, I ask you to prayerfully considered coming together, united,” he said.
As those comments suggested, things were bleaker for Rubio, who had a roller-coaster evening. Early in the night, analysis—or was it wishful thinking?—suggested Rubio might be able to win in Virginia, a state with a high concentration of well-educated, wealthier, establishment-friendly Republicans in Northern Virginia. In the end, though, Rubio couldn’t pull out the win there. The Florida senator finally notched a win in Minnesota late Tuesday—his first victory of the campaign. But in several states, Rubio was in danger of failing to cross the 20-percent threshold the party imposes to win any of the statewide delegates allocated on a proportional basis.
Yet when Rubio came out to speak, early in the night, he once again struck the same triumphant pose he has employed time and again, as his campaign finished second or third in contest after contest. “When I am president of the United States, we will not just save the American dream, we will expand it to more people than ever!” he said.
The most telling moment in his speech, however, came a few moments later. "Five days ago, we began to explain to the American people that Donald Trump is a con artist," Rubio said, alluding to the onslaught of opposition research, insults, and barnyard jokes he has directed at the GOP frontrunner, starting with Thursday’s debate. Why did that take so long, though? It may have been too late to save the Republican Party from Trump, and if it wasn’t, it may have been too late to save Rubio. His case as the Trump alternative depends not on beating Trump outright, but on depriving him of an outright majority of delegates ahead of the Republican convention, then wresting the nomination from him there. Rubio’s moment of truth comes on March 15, when Florida votes. If he can’t win the Sunshine State, his campaign is likely over.
Trump leads in polls there so far, and he taunted Rubio by holding his election-night celebration at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Fort Lauderdale. Backed by a meek Chris Christie, Trump boasted, joked, meandered, argued, and cajoled, taking questions from reporters and taking shots at Rubio. While Trump could have won more states, and he could have won by larger margins, the victories for both Rubio and Cruz mean neither man seems likely to leave the race. So far, division among Republicans has served Trump well.
Sanders called it an early night, capitalizing on his victory in Vermont. He gave a speech that almost sounded like a requiem for his impressive run. “This campaign is not just about electing a president; it is about transforming America,” he said. “It is about making our great country the nation that we know it has the potential to be. It is about dealing with some unpleasant truths that exist in America today and having he guts to confront those truths.”
Yet Sanders aides promised to fight on to the convention, and later results showed that he had won several states. In addition to Oklahoma, Sanders won in Colorado and in Minnesota—a state he’d campaigned in heavily, as he did in the Sooner State. But he lost to Clinton in Massachusetts, another state where he’d concentrated his energies.
Clinton, meanwhile, didn’t quite pull off the clean sweep of non-Vermont states that she’d hoped for, but she scored wins across the South, including in Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas. She is projected to take roughly double Sanders’s delegate total. Clinton has turned her attentions to the general election and to Donald Trump.
“[Our] work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole,” Clinton said. “I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness.” She delivered some fiery lines as well. "If you cheat your employees, exploit consumers, pollute our environment, or rip off the taxpayers we are going to hold you accountable.”
The story of the night remains the Republican side, though, and Trump’s strong showing. As the dust clears Wednesday, there will be renewed calls for both John Kasich and Ben Carson to leave the race. Kasich insists he has no plans to go anywhere until at least the March 15 elections, when he promises to win Ohio and hopes Rubio loses Florida. Pressure on Kasich and Carson to bow out is nothing new. Rubio, however, will have to work hard to prove that he’s still a viable candidate after a not-so-super Tuesday.
—David Graham
11:49 PM
Andrew McGill
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In an interview with CNN, Ted Cruz calls tonight's results "a winnowing process," but even strong prompting from Wolf Blitzer can't get him to name Marco Rubio in particular—or, for that matter, Kasich or Carson. He remained laser-focused on Trump. "I am the only candidate who has beaten Donald three times," he said. "The path to beating him is for us to unify.”
11:48 PM
Elaine Godfrey
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In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Marco Rubio claimed that he wasn't worried about Donald Trump's overwhelming success tonight. Why? Because, Rubio said, the Republican establishment simply won't be throwing its weight behind a candidate as unworthy as Trump. But actually, Ronald Brownstein recently wrote, it might be time for conservatives to recognize Trump as the successful, complex candidate he is: “If Trump can beat Cruz [on Super Tuesday] in heavily blue-collar and evangelical states on one side, and top Kasich and Rubio in white collar, less culturally conservative states on the other, it will grow increasingly daunting for any candidate to coalesce a coalition large enough to stop the front-runner.”
11:37 PM
Russell Berman
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CNN has now called the Minnesota caucuses for Bernie Sanders, giving him his fourth win of the night. Clinton has won the other seven, mostly larger states.
11:25 PM
Matt Ford
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Rubio's win in Minnesota is a rare bright spot for him, but he's still facing a rough road in the overall delegate hunt. The Florida senator is still below the 20-percent threshold in three states: Alabama with 18 percent of the vote, Massachusetts with 18 percent, and Texas with 17 percent. He's also dangerously close to it in Tennessee with 21 percent and Vermont with 20 percent.
11:25 PM
Nora Kelly
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Clinton's win in Massachusetts could be predictive, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today, citing how "closely watched" the state's race has been. "The outcome in the solidly Democratic state could foreshadow the direction of a party that has been divided between Mr. Sanders’s idealism and Mrs. Clinton’s pragmatism.” One state this victory could foreshadow if Sanders stays in the race till April? Maryland, which has a similar number of Democratic delegates and is similarly true blue.
11:14 PM
Priscilla Alvarez
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Marco Rubio is projected to win Minnesota—his first win in the presidential primary race thus far. The Florida senator sent out a press release to reporters earlier in the evening dubbing the campaign the “underdogs” in the race and seemingly putting the onus on Florida to keep him in the race. “Florida, I know you’re ready. The pundits say we’re underdogs, I’ll accept that. We’ve all been underdogs. This is a community of underdogs. This is a state of underdogs. This is a country of underdogs. But we will win,” Rubio said in the statement.
11:10 PM
Andrew McGill
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As Elaine noted, Minnesota could save Rubio from a shutout, and the North Star State's demographics might be just the mix he needed. It's highly educated, and the majority of its voters live in the urban and suburban area surrounding Minneapolis, where Rubio is leading Cruz by a decent margin. The Florida senator also picked up a boatload of state-level endorsements.
11:09 PM
Elaine Godfrey
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"Tonight we basically fought Donald Trump to a draw,” said Marco Rubio, in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN. Tapper asks him if he's in denial.
11:09 PM
Marina Koren
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I just checked the transcript of Marco Rubio's speech to supporters in Miami tonight, and the senator, who has not won a state tonight, said "When I am president..." 10 times. Rubio's on CNN right now talking to Jake Tapper, saying that he's "prepared all along for an extended haul." "We have more support than ever before," he said.
11:08 PM
Matt Ford
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How much is Trump's rise convulsing the GOP? Here's South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham last week at the Washington Press Club Foundation dinner:
"If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, no one would convict you." -- Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
— Laura Barron-Lopez (@lbarronlopez) February 26, 2016
And here's Graham tonight after Trump's dominant performance:
Lindsey Graham on CBS just now: "we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz."
— Jon Ward (@jonward11) March 2, 2016
11:08 PM
Russell Berman
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Bernie Sanders has won his third state of the night, as MSNBC declares him the winner of the caucuses in Colorado. He won Oklahoma and his home state of Vermont earlier in the evening, and he is currently leading in Minnesota among the early returns from the caucuses there.
11:01 PM
Russell Berman
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Television news tonight has been filled with pillars of the Republican establishment who are positively aghast at the looming nomination of Donald Trump. On MSNBC, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told Chris Matthews that the party could simply deny Trump the nomination at the convention if delegates broke away from him, even if he was the clear choice of a majority of voters in the primaries. On CBS, Senator Lindsey Graham said Republicans were "about to lose to the most dishonest politician in America, Hillary Clinton." He said several times and without equivocation that Republicans would simply lose if Trump won the nomination, because, he said, "dishonest beats crazy."
10:54 PM
Elaine Godfrey
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Marco Rubio might just score his first victory of the campaign in Minnesota, where he is currently leading Ted Cruz 37.3 to 28 percent, with 79 percent of poll results in.
10:51 PM
Nora Kelly
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In rattling off a list of Trump's boo-inducing policies, Cruz alleged that Trump "funded the Gang of Eight," referring to the team of senators—including rival Marco Rubio—who collaborated on a failed 2013 immigration reform bill. By contrast, Cruz "led the successful opposition" to their "amnesty plan." The history of Cruz's opposition to the bill is muddled; FactCheck.org has a nice rundown of why.
But what was noticeably missing from Cruz's speech tonight was an argument once central to proving his immigration bona fides: that Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, an immigration hard-liner, has defended Cruz's opposition to the bill. Cruz can't invoke Sessions anymore because his fellow senator recently announced he's endorsing Trump. In a statement released by the Trump campaign Sunday, Sessions said that “Trump’s trade and immigration plans will revitalize our shrinking middle class, keeping jobs and wealth and income inside the United States of America. Trump understands that a nation must always place the interests of its own people first.”
10:33 PM
Priscilla Alvarez
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Tonight, Donald Trump railed against Marco Rubio in his speech, pinning him as a loser who hasn’t won any states yet. And Cruz went after Trump, reiterating that his campaign is the only one that’s beaten the Republican front-runner. The candidates that haven’t received a mention? John Kasich and Ben Carson. According to Todd Starnes, Carson has reiterated that he’s not dropping out of the race, which is in line with what the neurosurgeon’s advisor said earlier today—that Carson won’t drop out until a candidate reaches the delegate count for the nomination.
10:32 PM
Marina Koren
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"Five years ago, I promised the people of Texas that I would fight with every breath in my body to stop Obamacare," Cruz says. According to the EPA, the average person takes between 17,280 and 23,040 breaths a day. Let's say it takes President Cruz his first 100 days in office to begin to follow through on that—that's between 1.7 million and 2.3 million breaths!
10:26 PM
Marina Koren
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Trump and Cruz both want to unify the GOP, but for two very different reasons. "I am a unifier," Trump said in his speech earlier. "I would love to see the Republican party and everybody get together." Cruz called for a unified party, too. "That is the only way to beat Donald Trump," he said.
10:24 PM
Elaine Godfrey
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“American shouldn't have a president whose words would make you feel embarrassed if you repeated them," Cruz says in a knock against Trump, after quoting JFK and FDR.
10:20 PM
Russell Berman
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Cruz asks the Republicans who have not won states or significant delegates to "prayerfully consider" coming together—i.e. dropping out of the race and supporting him. The trouble with this request is that as Trump has pointed out, Cruz is the most disliked Republican in the field among party leaders and the other candidates.
10:18 PM
Conor Friedersdorf
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Speaking in his home state of Texas after winning its primary by a sizable margin, Senator Ted Cruz declares that “so long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump’s path to the nomination remains more likely. And that would be a disaster for Republicans, conservatives, and the nation.” He calls his campaign the only one that "can beat, has beat, and will beat Donald Trump.”
10:18 PM
Yoni Appelbaum
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Many candidates are finding reason to cheer tonight. Trump and Clinton are racking up the wins. Ted Cruz pulled out two victors, as did Bernie Sanders. But I want to take a moment to salute a candidate who’s often been overlooked this year: former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore.
For months, pundits wondered how to tell whether Gilmore was actually running. He was squeezed out of most debates, and hardly traveled or campaigned. He was beloved by reporters for his eagerness to answer any question; he told my colleague Nora Kelly that Hillary Clinton is just as much of a socialist as Bernie Sanders. And then, just like that, he dropped out of the race.
But tonight, Jim Gilmore finally received the recognition he so craved. In Chelsea, Massachusetts, 366 voters cast their ballots for Gilmore, according to the Boston Globe’s tally, which would give him 47 percent of the vote—and, so far as I know, his first recorded win in any jurisdiction.
The key to winning, it seems, was dropping out entirely. Maybe Gilmore knew what he was doing all along.
Update: Although the official returns clearly show Gilmore in the lead, Jeff Blehar of Decision Desk HQ suggests that they’re likely one row off—which would make Chelsea’s results more in line with those of surrounding jurisdictions. If so, Gilmore has once again been left out in the cold.
10:11 PM
Andrew McGill
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Asked whether or not he trusts the Republican National Committee, Trump plays nice, mostly. “I like the RNC. I don't know that I've been treated fairly or not. I can't tell you that.” But he’s confident that, after tonight’s showing, the party would be crazy to turn him down. "If I'm going to win all of those states with tremendous numbers … I think it's awfully hard to say that's not the person we want to lead the party."
10:07 PM
Matt Ford
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Trump hit Rubio for not winning any states tonight, but Rubio is also dangerously close to falling below the 20 percent viability thresholds in a number of races. He's at 17 percent in Alabama, 18 percent in Massachusetts, 19 percent in Texas, and 19 percent in Vermont. Even in Georgia and Tennessee, he's hovering just slightly above the threshold, at 22 and 20 percent respectively. There are a lot of votes still to be counted tonight, but it's going to be a nailbiter for the Rubio campaign as the race pivots into a delegate slugfest.
10:06 PM
Russell Berman
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Trump on his relations with Congress, where Republican leaders have distanced themselves from his rhetoric: "Paul Ryan, I don't know him, but I'm going to get along great with him. And if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price, okay?"
10:05 PM
Marina Koren
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Donald Trump is asked about David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who recently endorsed the candidate. As Yoni reported on Sunday, back in 2000, Trump roundly condemned Duke. But in an interview with Jake Tapper this past Sunday, Trump dodged a question about whether he would repudiate support from Duke and white-supremacist groups. "I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about. You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about," he said in the interview. Tonight, he gave a somewhat more straightforward answer. "I said I disavow," he said. "How many times do I have to disavow?"
09:56 PM
Yoni Appelbaum
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For the last week, an energized Marco Rubio has tormented Donald Trump—sending a steady stream of playground taunts in his direction. His supporters cheered his new combativeness, delighted that someone was finally sticking it to The Donald.
But looking at the map tonight, it’s hard to see how it helped him. He hasn’t won any more states than Jeb Bush, who also tangled with Trump, to no apparent electoral advantage. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, has maintained a laser-like focus on his core voters—fighting to retain church-going southern evangelicals, by pointing out all the ways in which Trump’s views differ from their own. That effort appears to have paid off for Cruz in Oklahoma and Texas, even without his mocking the size of Trump’s hands, or any other part of his anatomy.
But Cruz lost the other Southern states up for grabs tonight, which he’d long counted on winning. He hasn’t demonstrated the ability to expand beyond his base of support. Even with the lion’s share of Texas’s huge trove of delegates, he trails far behind Trump—and doesn’t appear to have a shot of taking Florida, Ohio, or the other winner-take-all contests coming up on the calendar. That leaves him in the same spot as Rubio—with little prospect of actually winning, just hoping to deny Trump an outright majority of the delegates.
09:55 PM
Clare Foran
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With Chris Christie standing behind him, Donald Trump delivered a victory speech from Palm Beach, Florida, calling the night "an amazing evening." Trump quickly launched into an attack on Hillary Clinton, a reminder that the frontrunners on both sides of the aisle are increasingly looking toward the general election and anticipating an intense fight. "She wants to make America whole again, and I'm trying to figure out what is that all about," Trump said reacting to Clinton's speech earlier in the night.
Trump pit his promises against Clinton's, setting up a battle of the slogans. "Make America Great Again is gonna be much better than making America whole again," he promised. Trump congratulated Ted Cruz on winning Texas, but didn't offer much praise for Marco Rubio. "He had a tough night," Trump said of his Republican rival. "He is a lightweight as I've said many times before.”
09:50 PM
Russell Berman
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"I don't know that she's going to be allowed to run," Trump says of Hillary Clinton, continuing his strategy of questioning the very legitimacy of his opponents, beginning with President Obama. Does he really think she'll be sitting in jail come the fall?
09:50 PM
Conor Friedersdorf
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Donald Trump declares: “We have expanded the Republican Party.” Is that true? As yet, I’d say it’s unclear. He seems to have brought in new voters. But how many existing voters will flee the GOP if he’s the nominee?
09:50 PM
Russell Berman
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Trump is asked about threats from conservatives like Senator Ben Sasse about the possibility of supporting a third-party candidate instead of Trump. "They can always do that, and then they'll just lose everything," he replies.
09:44 PM
Conor Friedersdorf
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Listening to Donald Trump’s promise to campaign hard in Florida, I’m struck by this thought: Ted Cruz won his home state tonight––and Marco Rubio could still lose his. That reality ought to factor into the intra-Republican debate about whether Senator Cruz or Senator Rubio is the better Trump-stopper.
09:42 PM
Marina Koren
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A day ago, Chris Christie refused to take any "off-topic" questions at a press conference where reporters wanted to know exactly why, after months of bashing Donald Trump, Christie had suddenly endorsed him for president. Now, Christie is in Palm Beach, Florida, introducing Trump's speech to supporters. "He has shown himself to be tough and strong and bold. He's shown himself to be a fighter," Christie said. "A leader who speaks plainly to the American people. He has listened to the American people. The American people are listening to him. And he's bringing the country together. That, ladies and gentlemen, is not a campaign. It's a movement."
09:41 PM
Andrew McGill
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Jake Tapper just called Ted Cruz's win in Oklahoma "huge," arguing that Cruz now has enough ammunition to argue convincingly that he, not Rubio, is the viable alternative to Trump. But Aaron Blake at The Washington Post says Cruz's success in Oklahoma may actually indicate weakness: It's possible he's just a regional pick. While Cruz has heavily courted the evangelical Christian vote, his efforts haven't amounted to much in the South, which has favored Trump. "Thus far, evangelicals in other parts of the country just aren't giving him the support he needs," Blake writes.
09:40 PM
Nora Kelly
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Chris Christie speaking from Palm Beach: "Tonight, Donald Trump is the clear winner on Super Tuesday, but the win is important for our country. Tonight Donald Trump has won Georgia and Massachusetts, Alabama and Virginia, and he's also won the great state of Tennessee. Tonight is the beginning of Donald Trump bringing the Republican party together for a big victory this November." And tonight is the beginning of him bringing the nation together, too, Christie adds.
09:40 PM
Caitlin Frazier
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If you're surprised that Bernie has taken my home state of Oklahoma, don't be. In the last twenty years the state has changed from blue to red. (As recently as 2008, the state senate was split evenly.) If you've resisted that trend and are still a Democrat in Oklahoma, you're likely a diehard liberal. I once described to a Californian that being a liberal in Oklahoma is like a secret handshake, what being a dedicated conservative must feel like in California. Oklahoma Bernie supporters even created their own brand of salsa, Feel the Bern.
09:39 PM
Russell Berman
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We're still waiting for results from Minnesota, Alaska, and most of Arkansas, but it's worth taking a step back and looking at just how disappointing the results are so far for Marco Rubio, who has become the GOP establishment's choice to take on Donald Trump. He's lost the entire South to Trump as well as Texas and Oklahoma to Cruz. And it looks like he'll pick up more third-place finishes than second. He fared the best in Virginia, where he finished a few points behind Trump. But that was due almost entirely to his dominance in the Northern Virginia precincts just outside Washington D.C., where as Yoni noted, the Republican establishment literally lives. Put another way: Rubio won the Beltway, and only the Beltway. And that will be a powerful argument that Cruz can make for why he is the more viable candidate to take on Trump in the weeks ahead.
09:38 PM
David A. Graham
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Fox is reporting that Florida Governor Rick Scott will endorse Donald Trump tonight—a report that his spokeswoman quickly shot down. If such an endorsement does materialize, though, it’d be pretty amazing. First, it’d be amazing if a two-term Republican governor were to back Trump for president. But it’s also striking that Trump would want Scott’s backing. Just a few years ago, Scott had plummeted to a stunningly low 26 percent approval rating. But then Scott rebounded and won reelection, and he has since compared himself to Trump, praising him in an op-ed for "capturing the frustration of many Americans after seven years of President Obama’s very intentional government takeover of the U.S. economy.” Both men share a history in business—and controversial business records, too.
09:30 PM
Priscilla Alvarez
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On the Democratic front, 65 percent of Latino voters backed Hillary Clinton in Texas in comparison to Bernie Sanders’s 34 percent. Texas has one of the “largest Hispanic statewide eligible voter shares” in the country, according to the Pew Research Center. The exit polls in the state tonight are far more clear than they were following the Nevada Democratic caucuses. Then, the polls were a point of contention between the two candidates after they showed the Vermont senator with a lead among Latinos. Sanders has struggled to gain traction with minority voters, and tonight’s results reflect that.
09:28 PM
Matt Ford
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Vermont isn't among the highest-profile Republican races tonight, but Trump and Kasich are in a tight duel for the victory there nonetheless. With 43 percent of the vote in, the New York billionaire leads the Ohio governor 33 percent to 30 percent. Trailing in third place, once again, is Marco Rubio. With 19.3 percent of the vote, he's currently slated to fall below the 20 percent viability threshold in the state, so he’d claim none of its 16 delegates.
09:27 PM
Clare Foran
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After winning his home state of Vermont earlier in the evening, Bernie Sanders has now won Oklahoma. It might not seem like a natural fit for the self-described Democratic socialist candidate, but the Sanders campaign had been hoping he would pull out a victory in the state. “Oklahoma is a place where there is a tremendous amount of outsider, anti-establishment sentiment in the electorate,” Sanders's top strategist Tad Devine told USA Today, explaining the campaign's rationale. Expect Team Sanders to point to the victory in Oklahoma as evidence of broad appeal.
09:19 PM
Priscilla Alvarez
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One question coming into tonight was who Latino voters would back in the Republican race. In the Nevada Republican caucuses, Donald Trump had a commanding lead, leaving Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio trailing behind. In Texas, though, it looks as though Cruz has come out ahead. According to CNN’s exit polls, 31 percent of Latinos backed Cruz, followed by 28 percent for Trump and 27 percent for Rubio. Latinos made up 10 percent of the state’s GOP primary voters.
09:17 PM
Russell Berman
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Rubio's tough night is underscored by how few people will see him: He began his Election Night speech while Hillary Clinton was still speaking, and after showing him for a few minutes, all three cable news channels cut away before he was done.
09:14 PM
Andrew McGill
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Right now, Marco Rubio is running at around 19 percent statewide in Texas. If he fails to break 20 percent, he won’t get any of the state’s 44 at-large delegates; if he does, he might grab a few from Trump and Cruz. As Anderson Cooper just said on CNN, "He’s not only running against Trump and Cruz. He’s running against math."
09:13 PM
Vann Newkirk
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The bulk of the Republican winner-take-all contests are still on the horizon, and they’ll keep this thing nominally competitive for some time at least. There are 391 winner-take-all delegates left, including those in Florida, Ohio, and Arizona. These contests represent a third of all remaining delegates. For Rubio, Florida still represents a long-shot chance to close the gap on March 15. It is, as my colleague Nora notes, the location of several campaign speeches.
However, the Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, and Mississippi primaries between now and then might dilute that long shot even more.
09:10 PM
Nora Kelly
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A burst of good news for Cruz tonight. Not only has he won Texas, but he's taken Oklahoma as well. Up until just minutes ago, the race in Oklahoma was too close to call.
09:09 PM
Clare Foran
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Ted Cruz really needed a win in Texas, and it looks like he got it with several networks calling the state for the Lone Star State senator. Earlier in the day, Cruz candidly told reporters in Houston that "any candidate who cannot win his home state has real problems." If the senator had lost Texas, it would have been hard for Cruz's campaign to argue that he had a viable path forward to win the GOP nomination. Now, Cruz can point to his Texas win as evidence that he deserves to stay in the race.
09:07 PM
Conor Friedersdorf
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Speaking as a Californian, and with no offense intended toward folks in sparsely populated Alaska and Nevada, I’d love to see future election cycles that incorporated more West Coast voters and their sensibilities earlier in the primary process. Texas has a culture all its own, and I’m glad it votes on Super Tuesday. But if I had my druthers, California or Colorado would move up its primary and do more to shape races on both sides of the partisan divide.
09:07 PM
Matt Ford
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Both Fox and NBC are calling Texas for Cruz. It's a must-win victory for the senator as his campaign noted over the past few days. But since the state allocates delegates proportionally, Rubio's third-place performance may actually be crucial here. He's currently sitting at 19.5 percent of the vote with 33 percent of precincts reporting. If he doesn't break the 20 percent threshold, he doesn't get any delegates from the state—and Cruz and Trump get even more.
09:03 PM
Russell Berman
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As expected, Texas is called for Hillary Clinton as soon as the polls closed at 9 p.m. Eastern
09:03 PM
Nora Kelly
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Clinton is speaking tonight from Florida—Miami, specifically—which isn't voting until March 15. Her choice of location could be interpreted as a signal of her confidence in Tuesday's results, that she's already moving on to the next big contests. Her Republican counterpart, Donald Trump, is similarly in the Sunshine State, celebrating at his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach.
08:56 PM
Conor Friedersdorf
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Hillary Clinton declares to cheering supporters: “What a Super Tuesday!” She has won five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia. This is Clinton country dating back to the 1990s, when Bill Clinton rose from the Arkansas governor’s mansion to the presidency. “This country belongs to all of us, not just those at the top,” Clinton says. “America prospers when we all prosper. America is strong when we’re all strong.” Taking a shot at Donald Trump, she declares that the work before us is not “to make America great again,” because “America never stopped being great.” The crowd chants, “USA, USA, USA.”
08:55 PM
Nora Kelly
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Clinton victorious, from Florida: "I congratulate Senator Sanders for his strong showing and campaigning." She thanks her supporters, surrogates, and online donors—"most" of whom, she notes, gave "less than $100." It's an obvious nod to Sanders' small-dollar donor base.
08:53 PM
Priscilla Alvarez
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Donald Trump is now projected to win Virginia. John Kasich raked in more than 66,000 votes in Virginia—if they’d gone to Rubio, they would’ve given him the state. With two Republican establishment figures in the mix, it’s been particularly difficult for support to coalesce behind one candidate—one reason for Rubio’s defeat. Meanwhile, Kasich is looking to upcoming races in the Midwest to keep his campaign afloat. Tonight’s results may increase the pressure on Kasich to exit the race.
08:49 PM
Andrew McGill
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Georgia has already been called for Trump, who’s piled up 45 percent of the vote with 12 percent of the precincts reporting. But more could develop tonight: If he gets more the 50 percent of the vote statewide, he automatically gets all of the state's 76 delegates. It's similar to how the votes fell in South Carolina, where Trump won every delegate by leading in every congressional district. But this time, it could be easier; Georgia delegate rules would award every delegate to Trump, even at the congressional district level, if he gets a majority across the state.
08:36 PM
Nora Kelly
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Clinton has to be breathing a not-entirely-unexpected sigh of relief that she has won her adopted home state of Arkansas, where her husband served as governor for two terms. At a campaign stop in Pine Bluff last week, she told voters that “Arkansas runs deep in me.” She said at the time that she was “so grateful and so proud to have Arkansas connections, and I will do whatever I can as president to be a good partner to this state.”
08:35 PM
Yoni Appelbaum
Link
The votes are being counted, but in a race this closely contested, it’s likely to be the delegate count that ultimately matters.
The crew at the New York Times’ Upshot blog—Amanda Cox, Josh Katz, and Kevin Quealy—has built a real-time estimator of the total hauls for each candidate that bounces back and forth as the results come in. At the moment, it shows Trump hovering around 290 for the night, Cruz at around 145, Rubio at 95, Kasich at 25, and Carson at 15. (By the time you visit the site, those numbers will have changed again.) There’s still room for some substantial shifts. But those results would put Trump about a third of the way toward the 1,237 he’ll need to secured the Republican nomination.
08:35 PM
David A. Graham
Link
Trump vs Clinton. November 8, 2016.
— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) March 2, 2016
08:33 PM
Russell Berman
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Needless to say, any victories for Ted Cruz beyond Texas tonight would be big for him, given that many had been close to writing off his campaign given Rubio's strong finish in South Carolina. He now has a shot at Arkansas and Oklahoma, according to the early returns and projections.
08:31 PM
Priscilla Alvarez
Link
Exit polls are showing Donald Trump with a commanding lead in some Southern states, which Ted Cruz was also banking on for its swath of evangelical voters. In Alabama, 45 percent of evangelical voters back Trump, with Cruz trailing behind at 19 percent, according to exit polls. But in Oklahoma, Cruz takes the lead at 37 percent. How this plays out tonight could sway the race. As my colleague Ronald Brownstein has noted, Trump’s broad appeal could “grow increasingly daunting for any candidate to coalesce a coalition large enough to stop the front-runner.”
08:30 PM
Andrew McGill
Link
Alex Wong / Getty
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