NEW YORK — Donald Trump is the projected winner of the Republican presidential primary in New York, according to exit polls and early returns – a win that solidifies his front-runner status after days of staff turmoil and questions about his campaign’s ability to win the delegates needed to secure the nomination.
The Associated Press called the race for Trump as soon as polls closed at 9 p.m. The state’s Democratic primary remained too close to call despite front-runner Hillary Clinton’s home state advantage. Like Trump, the former secretary of state anticipated a decisive victory to vault her closer to her party’s nomination.
Polls had shown Clinton and Trump leading by double-digit margins in a state with a vastly diverse backdrop, stretching from the riches of Wall Street and suburban Westchester County to the struggles of industrial cities upstate like Watervliet and Watertown.
A big win for Trump brings him closer to securing an outright majority of Republican delegates — an outcome that remains in jeopardy and has prompted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to mount a spirited, methodical campaign to force a contested convention. A Clinton victory would provide momentum after a blitz of recent primary and caucus wins for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Unlike Trump, Clinton is so far ahead in the delegate count that it would be nearly impossible for Sanders to catch her.While the party front-runners spent much of the day in New York, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich on the GOP side and Sanders in the Democratic race stumped for votes in Maryland and Pennsylvania, which will hold primaries next week.
Early exit poll results in New York showed that Trump was poised for a commanding victory thanks to a less conservative electorate that favors an outsider in the White House.
A clear majority of New York Republican voters — seven in ten — said the party should nominate the leading candidate regardless of whether they achieve an absolute majority of convention delegates, according to exit poll results reported by CNN. More than half of New York Republican voters consider themselves “somewhat” conservative, according to exit polls reported by CNN. If that stands throughout the evening, it would be higher than any state in this year’s contests, and shows Trump’s likely support in the state.
Most GOP primary voters also said they want the next president to hail from outside the political establishment. If that figure holds, it would mark the highest level of support for a political outsider in Republican contests this year, according to CNN.
Roughly four in ten New York Democratic primary voters are non-white, according to early exit poll data reported by ABC News, up slightly from 30 percent in the 2008 Democratic primary in the state. That apparent shift signaled a good night for Clinton, given that non-white voters have favored her over Sanders by a 70 to 29 percent margin across earlier contests.
Sanders has performed especially well among independent voters this year, and preliminary exit polling reported by ABC News found nearly one-fifth of the Democratic electorate identifying as independents. While up slightly from 12 percent in the 2008 primary, New York’s current mark is below the 24 percent average in Democratic contests so far, probably due to the state’s closed primary, where only party registrants can vote.
Tuesday’s vote also signaled stronger unity among Democrats than Republicans. At least six in ten New York Democratic primary voters said they would definitely support either Clinton or Sanders as the party’s nominee, according to preliminary exit poll data reported by ABC News. But about half of Republicans said they would “definitely support” Trump, while roughly a quarter would support Cruz, and three in ten would support Kasich.
Trump planned to spend the evening at Trump Tower in Manhattan, where he lives and works. While several hundred reporters gathered in the pink marble lobby for a news conference, guests dressed in cocktail attire took the escalator downstairs to a party in the building’s food court.
Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told reporters that he expects Trump to win big in New York on Tuesday night, especially “out on the island” — Long Island — and in places where he held rallies. His goal was for Trump to do better in his home state of New York than Cruz did in Texas or Kasich did in Ohio.
Lewandowski said the campaign is already looking ahead to the burst of nominating contests next week in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
“I think the Cruz campaign is going to be mathematically eliminated from the nomination a week from tonight,” Lewandowski said. “If the results go well tonight, he has to win 95 percent of the remaining delegates moving forward, which is almost an impossible task. I think it’s time to unite around Donald Trump, he’s the only person who can win the nomination, he’s the only person who can get the delegates, he’s the only one who can expand the map moving into the general election.”
When asked about the campaign’s sudden and dramatic restructuring, which has shifted power away from Lewandowski, the campaign manager replied: “We’re growing, baby.”
In New York City, the Board of Elections conceded that tens of thousands of Brooklyn voters had been purged from the voter rolls and residents complained about problems at polling sites across the city. Angered by the news, city officials announced plans to audit the agency and New York Mayor Bill be Blasio said he wanted the problems fixed in time for congressional primaries scheduled in June.
Despite the troubles, many New Yorkers celebrated their newfound relevance Tuesday, even if they have grown a bit weary of the barrage of ads on the airwaves in recent weeks.
“It’s nice. I feel like our vote usually doesn’t count,” said Sunita Ray, 41, who voted for Clinton in Midtown Manhattan. Still, she said she will not miss some aspects of the heated primary campaign. “The ads were a little annoying.”Clinton cast her own vote in Chappaqua in suburban New York, where supporters had waited outside with signs and buttons. She later flew to Washington to address the North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) legislative conference, although she planned to end the day in New York City.
Trailing throughout the contest, the Sanders campaign played down his prospects in New York, citing the state’s closed primary.
At a rally at Pennsylvania State University before the polls closed in New York, Sanders told a crowd in a packed filed house that he was going to do a lot better there than people thought, despite a number of obstacles.
“We’re going to do just fine tonight in New York,” Sanders told more than 6,600 people in State College, mostly college students, according to a figure supplied by the venue.
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