Hillary Clinton clinched a decisive victory over Bernie Sanders in New York on Tuesday, crushing hopes among his supporters that a recent winning streak could change the direction of the Democratic presidential race.
In the Republican race, Donald Trump swept to victory in his home state, reviving his hopes of winning the Republican party nomination outright.
Clinton’s projected win by the Associated Press came 45 minutes after polls closed and suggested a commanding performance that could see her take a clear majority of the 247 delegates on offer and extend her national lead.
Appearing at a victory rally in Midtown Manhattan, the former secretary of state said: “Tonight, the race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight.”
However, she stopped short of calling on her leftwing opponent to drop out, adding: “I am going forward because more voices remain to be heard,” and telling his supporters: “I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us.”
With over 98.4% of the votes tallied, Clinton led 57.9% to 42.1% and was ahead in New York City. With more than 1.7m Democratic votes counted, Clinton held a lead in excess of 280,000. By midnight local time she had won 135 delegates to 104 for Sanders.
With almost 100% of the votes in from the five boroughs of New York City, Clinton was winning everywhere, 20 points ahead in Kings County, which covers Brooklyn, and 39 points ahead in the Bronx, which has the highest proportion of black voters in the city.
In Manhattan, Clinton led by 32 points, by 21 points in multicultural Queens and by a narrower seven points in Staten Island.
Sanders lost the block in Brooklyn where he grew up by 36 votes to 19, but in a sign in his dominance in rural areas upstate he beat the former secretary of state in Clinton County.
A series of exit polls had suggested a closer race, with CNN putting Clinton’s lead at a much tighter margin of 52%-48%. However, while exit polls indicated Sanders won comfortably with under-40s and white men, Clinton was ahead with older voters, women, and black and Latino supporters.
A packed ballroom at the Sheraton New York Times Square hotel erupted into cheers as the race was called for Clinton. The crowd, in a jubilant mood throughout the evening and entertained by a live band, immediately broke into chants of “Hillary! Hillary!” as Celebration by Kool and the Gang boomed out.
Their mood soured just once, when the live newsfeed on a giant screen mounted behind the stage cut into Donald Trump’s victory speech. In the Republican race, Trump secured a big home-turf victory, confirmed within seconds of the polls closing.
With over 98.4% of the vote counted, Trump was on 60.5%, with John Kasich on 25.1% and Ted Cruz trailing with just 14.5%.
The billionaire businessman was always expected to thrive in his home state and there was never much doubt that he would defeat Cruz, the Texas senator whose brand of conservatism went down badly here, and Ohio governor Kasich, who struggled to make an impact.
“It’s just incredible,” Trump told a crowd at Trump Tower in Manhattan. “I guess we’re close to 70%, and we’re gonna end at a very high level, and get a lot more delegates than anybody projected, even in their wildest imagination.”
“It’s impossible to catch us,” declared the Queens-born tycoon, surrounded by brass, marble and a big TV showing Fox News. “Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they get those delegates with voters and voting, and that’s what’s going to happen. And you watch because the people aren’t going to stand for it. It’s a crooked system, it’s a system that’s rigged and we’re going to go back to the old way: it’s called you vote and you win.”
Clinton, who appeared for a victory speech shortly after 10pm, said: “Today proved once again – there is no place like home. New Yorkers, you have always had my back and I have always tried to have yours.”
After an acrimonious Democratic contest in a state where both candidates have strong personal roots, the former secretary of state is expected to call on Democrats to begin the process of unifying against Republicans, even though Sanders may continue campaigning until July.
But bitter wrangling over alleged voting irregularities and strict registration rules may fuel anger among Sanders supporters who argue the system favours establishment candidates.
Earlier Sanders had criticised closed New York primary rules that require voters to register their party affiliation up to six months before the election. “Today, 3 million people in the state of New York who are independents have lost their right to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary. That’s wrong,” said the Vermont senator.
Most polling leading up to Tuesday’s primary showed Clinton comfortably ahead of Sanders in her adopted home state, which elected her to two terms as a US senator and also chose her over Barack Obama in 2008.
Clinton had cautioned her supporters against complacency while barnstorming the state in the days before the election, emphasising repeatedly that she was “not taking anything for granted” and nor should they.
Her whirlwind schedule included retail stops all across New York City, from Queens to the Bronx to East Harlem, where her campaign hoped to boost turnout among the African American and Latino voters who have overwhelmingly gravitated toward Clinton over Sanders in other contests.
Although Clinton came into New York with a sizable delegate lead over Sanders, a decisive win in the Empire State should help her lock up the Democratic nomination both mathematically and in narrative. She achieved a victory despite an onslaught of attacks from Sanders, whose campaign grew increasingly sharp in tone in the past few weeks.
On the eve of the New York primary, Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, told reporters that the math did not add up for Sanders, and argued that the senator had “a very steep and close to impossible path to the nomination”.
“We expect that Secretary Clinton will be the nominee, particularly after tomorrow,” Mook said on a conference call with reporters. “Senator Sanders and his campaign need to decide if they’re going to continue on this line of attack. He needs to decide if he wants to continue making attacks on the Democratic party itself and on allied groups like Planned Parenthood.”
The Sanders campaign, meanwhile, had been playing down expectations of pulling off a surprise win in recent days, but it is likely to focus on the sizable delegate haul from New York as a justification for its strategy of giving all American voters a chance to express their preference in the Democratic primary.
Sanders was returning to Vermont on Wednesday for a meeting with his advisers, which is likely to consider what kind of campaign he wants to keep running as the mathematical route to the nomination looks narrower and narrower.
Before the New York polls closed on Tuesday, he had already moved on to one of the next battleground states, insisting Clinton was getting “nervous” as he took to the stage at Pennsylvania State University.
However, his remarks appeared aimed at managing expectations about the scale of her anticipated victory. “We’re going to do a lot better I think than people thought we would,” he said. “We’re going to do just fine tonight in New York.”
The Vermont senator reserved his strongest language for a blistering attack on New York’s voting process after reports of widespread irregularities and missing registrations.
“We are deeply disturbed by what we’re hearing from polling places across the state,” the campaign said in a statement. “From long lines and dramatic understaffing to longtime voters being forced to cast affidavit ballots and thousands of registered New Yorkers being dropped from the rolls, what’s happening today is a disgrace.
“We need to be making it easier for people to vote, not inventing arbitrary obstacles – and today’s shameful demonstration must underline the urgent importance of fixing voting laws across the country.”
The Clinton campaign had little sympathy for complaints about New York’s closed primary system, which has been in place for many years. “We didn’t set the rules here. We came here to compete,” her campaign chairman, John Podesta, told CNN, arguing Clinton did not complain when she lost states.
guardian
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