NEW YORK — The results are in, and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have won the crucial New York primaries.
CNN projected that Trump will clear the 50 percent threshold to take all of New York’s 14 statewide delegates. He will need to win majorities in each of the state’s 27 congressional districts to win all of the remaining delegates.
Numbers for Clinton are still pending.
For the first time in decades, New Yorkers played a crucial role in shaping the presidential nomination process. Some 95 delegates were up for grabs for the Republican party and 247 delegates were at stake for the Democrats. Usually at this point in the campaign season things are a bit more firm.
Hillary Clinton and her husband, President Bill Clinton, voted this morning at the Douglas G. Grafflin Elementary School in Chappaqua, where they live. New York native Donald Trump voted this morning at Central Synagogue in Midtown.
Though Bernie Sanders was born and raised in New York, he was in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Cruz was also in Pennsylvania, holding an event in Harrisburg. John Kasich held two events in Pittsburgh and Maryland. Pennsylvania’s primary will be held next Tuesday, along with Connecticut’s.
Trump badly needed a sweeping win in New York — if Ted Cruz peeled away a significant number of delegates, it will become that much more difficult for Trump to outright clinch the GOP nomination ahead of this summer’s Republican convention. For Clinton, the challenge has more to do with optics: putting an end to Sanders’ winning streak in the west and undermining his narrative that he’s the Democrat with the most momentum.
As the presidential candidates and national media descended on New York, local political figures in both parties relished the state’s rare moment in the spotlight of a presidential election.
“It’s been an unusual circumstance where New York is one of the deciding factors in the Democratic race, so that’s exciting,” said Democratic Queens Borough President Melinda Katz.
Although Clinton continues to have a sizable lead in delegates, the New York race came after Sanders has won eight of the last nine Democratic contests — a reality that the Vermont senator has repeatedly touted on the campaign trail.
“I think the Clinton campaign and the secretary are getting a little bit nervous,” Sanders told CNN after last week’s particularly combative Democratic debate in Brooklyn.
Tuesday’s contests were also personally significant for several of the candidates who have roots in New York.
Trump is a Queens native and now-Manhattanite whose famous last name is featured on real estate properties around the city. For Clinton, the current juncture in the race marks something of a homecoming: she was a New York senator for eight years, owns a home in Chappaqua and her campaign headquarters is in Brooklyn. And while Sanders has represented Vermont on Capitol Hill for decades, he was born and raised in Brooklyn and has spoken fondly about his upbringing in the borough.
‘New Hampshire moment’
New York State Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox referred to the contests here as his state’s “New Hampshire moment” — a reference to the New England state’s outsized role in the presidential primary.
“This is what the New York state party needs. We need this kind of excitement,” Cox said. “We are indeed having our decisive moment in selecting the next president of the United States.”
Over the past few weeks, Trump has come face-to-face with the Cruz campaign’s strong command of the complicated delegate allocation rules. The GOP front-runner has expressed frustration as he’s watched Cruz walk away with victories and grow his delegate pile — a sentiment that boiled over after the Texas senator swept the Colorado Republican convention earlier this month.
Trump is becoming increasingly vocal in his criticism of the Republican National Committee and the party’s nominating process, calling the latter “crooked” and “corrupt.”
