Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were a giant step closer to their parties’ presidential nominations Wednesday after crushing their respective Democratic and Republican rivals in a string of president
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were a giant step closer to their parties’ presidential nominations Wednesday after crushing their respective Democratic and Republican rivals in a string of presidential primaries.
Ms Clinton has now virtually cleared the way to become the Democratic nominee in the November presidential election, the first woman in US history to reach that milestone.
The former secretary of state won four out of five primaries Tuesday in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and the night’s big prize, the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
She conceded only the small state of Rhode Island to rival Bernie Sanders in a near sweep that gives her an almost insurmountable delegate lead.
Ms Clinton now has 2,168 delegates, including more than 500 “super-delegates”, against Mr Sanders’s 1,401, with about 1,000 more to be distributed in the 14 rema-ining nominating races. She needs 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.
Mr Trump, the New York billionaire, easily defeated rivals John Kasich and Ted Cruz in all five states that held contests — Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware — with a margin of victory rivalling that of his home state of New York a week ago.
The race now pivots to Indiana, which is Mr Cruz’s best chance to slow Mr Trump’s momentum toward the Republican nomination for the November 8 presidential election to succeed Demo-cratic President Barack Obama.
