The presidential primaries tilted back toward the frontrunners on Tuesday night, with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump pummeling their competition in New York.
The former Secretary of State beat surging Sen. Bernie Sanders 58-42 percent, breaking the democratic socialist’s momentum after a string of seven straight victories. Clinton will take the majority of N.Y.’s 247 delegates, expanding her delegate lead, which already stood at more than 200 at the start of the night.
“Today you’ve proved once and again, there’s no place like home,” Clinton told a crowd of jubilant supporters in New York City last night. A Chicago-area native and former First Lady of Arkansas, Clinton represented the state as a Senator a decade ago. She currently resides in Harlem.
“Victory is in sight,” she added.
After the race was called, Sanders flew back to his home state of Vermont to get “recharged.” There are no signs he will fold up his movement following the crushing defeat.
“We’re going to go to the convention,” Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver told MSNBC late Tuesday night. He added that the Senator could still pick up some wins in remaining delegate-rich contests like California, New Jersey, and Oregon.
The Sanders team also decried election shenanigans in New York–from the nature of the state’s closed primary, which prevented independent voters from participating, to news that the New York City election officials stripped 125,000 residents from the voter rolls ahead of Tuesday’s contest.
“It is absurd that in Brooklyn, New York–where I was born, actually–tens of thousands of people as I understand it, have been purged from the voting rolls,” Sanders said during a rally in Pennsylvania.
NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who endorsed Clinton, admitted that that “perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed.” He promised a full inquiry into the matter.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump’s campaign is back on track with a blowout win in his home state. The businessman took 60 percent of the vote, earning nearly all of the Empire State’s 95 delegates up for grabs. John Kasich (R-Ohio) snuck into second place, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) finished in a distant third.
The real estate mogul dismissed his competition on Tuesday night, previewing what could be an appeal to a contested Republican National Convention.
“We have won millions of more votes than Sen. Cruz.” Trump said, adding that he’s also won about 300 delegates more than the Senator, too.
“We’re really, really rocking,” he said to supporters.
According to polling site, FiveThirtyEight, however, Trump is still roughly 50 delegates short of staying on track to hit the 1,237-mark–the threshold he needs to cross to secure the nomination ahead of the GOP convention in Cleveland.
Next Tuesday, five states vote on both the Republican and Democratic sides. They include Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania.
