After a period with no major primary days on the schedule for the hopeful presidential candidates, the state of New York was up on Tuesday. For Hillary Clinton this meant to strike back against Bernie Sanders after he has won seven out of the last eight primaries. On the Republican side, Donald Trump was looking to crush Ted Cruz and build upon his lead. And as always, the questions then are, who won? Who lost? And what do these results mean?
The Winners: There were two clear winners in New York on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (pictured above). In the Democratic race, Clinton beat her sole rival Bernie Sanders comfortably (see all the numbers and results on the bottom of this page). Thus, increasing her delegate lead and finally striking back after losing a lot of states to him, especially in the West. In the GOP race, Donald Trump won a crushing victory against Ted Cruz and John Kasich.
The Losers: It could easily be argued that the losers were the rest of the pack, Cruz, Sanders and Kasich. However, Kasich did beat Cruz by double digits to claim the second place after Trump. In other words, the biggest loser in the Republican race was Ted Cruz, who also had been criticizing the values of New Yorkers prior to the election. Among the Democrats, there was only one loser, Bernie Sanders. Despite growing up in Brooklyn and riding on a wave of victories, Sanders could not turn his momentum into a win in the delegate-heavy state of New York.
What do these results mean? In the Republican race, Trump will be happy not only to win New York, but to win with such a large margin. The reason for this is that he picked up almost all the delegates (he got 89, Kasich took the last 3). This result was then almost perfect for him, in his effort to reach over half of the total delegates and avoid a contested or brokered convention in July. Something you can read more about here. However, Trump will need a lot more victories such as the one in New York if he is to be certain to get enough delegates before the Republican National Convention. Amongst the Democrats, the victory puts Clinton back on track to secure the nomination after disrupting Sanders momentum. The Sanders campaign had hoped for an upset in the delegate-heavy primary in New York, like they had in Michigan. However, this was not the case and Sanders need to rack up a lot more delegates before the Democratic National Convention in July if he is to have any hope of winning the nomination. Yet, all the candidates can look forward to many more primaries including ones with many delegates such as the greatest populated state, California.
The Numbers*:
The Democratic race:
New York:
- Hillary Clinton 58%
- Bernie Sanders 42%
The Republican race:
New York:
- Donald Trump 61%
- John Kasich 25%
- Ted Cruz 15%
*Numbers taken from CNN’s estimates.
Want to read more about the candidates? Head on over to the candidates’ page.
(Photo credit: Wikimedia & Gage Skidmore)
American Elections 
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