SANDERS, TRUMP WIN PRIMARIES
Lack of clear runner-up in GOP race
• Donald Trump swept to a massive victory in the Republican New Hampshire primary Tuesday, easing concerns about his political organization and leaving a tangled GOP field in his wake.
Trump had about 34 per cent of the vote, well ahead of his nearest competitor, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio at 16 per cent, with 48 per cent of the votes counted. A pack of also-rans, including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Chris Christie, all had between about eight and 12 per cent at that point.
The size of Trump’s win and the lack of a strong runner-up means the Republican race is likely to remain muddled for weeks and possibly months to come. No one candidate from the mainstream has emerged to challenge Trump or Cruz, who won last week’s Iowa caucus, for the nomination.
Speaking to supporters Tuesday night, Trump praised his campaign team.
“You know we learned a lot about ground games in one week, I have to tell you,” he said, a reference to his weaker-than-expected showing in Iowa last Monday. Over fevered shouts and chants of “USA! USA!” and “Trump! Trump! Trump,” he ran though the greatest hits of his populist message.
“The world is going to respect us again, believe me,” he said.
Meanwhile, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won an easy victory over Hillary Clinton. Sanders took 59 per cent to Clinton’s 39 per cent, riding the support of younger voters and men to erase any chance of a smooth ride to the nomination for the former secretary of state.
Both Trump and Sanders tapped into an anti-establishment mood rife with discontent and anger at the political class in New Hampshire this week. At rallies, both men railed against the influence of money in politics, the loss of American jobs and the power of pharmaceutical companies. It was not unusual, at events for either man, to meet voters who expressed support for both, despite their wildly different policy views.
The wins, Trump’s especially, represent a rejection of mainstream American politics by a significant body of voters. Trump has so far run a deeply unorthodox and often controversial campaign. He has vowed to build a wall on the Mexican border, to ban Muslim immigrants and to bring back waterboarding and other, even harsher, methods of interrogation.
At a rally in Manchester on Monday night, he ridiculed his opponents, at one point repeating onstage a supporter’s charge that Cruz is “a pussy” for his reluctance to praise waterboarding, a form of torture, with sufficient vim during a Republican debate.
None of that hurt Trump in New Hampshire, though. “I love his views on immigration,” said Trump supporter Mary Jones at his victory party in Manchester on Tuesday night. “I think people should come here legally, not illegally.”
“I came here and I did it the legal way,” agreed Trump volunteer Joel Gomez, who was born in the Dominican Republican. “Mr. Trump is dead on. If you are here illegally, you need to go back home and come back here the legal away.”
Gomez and Jones were among the hundreds of Trump supporters who waited, sometimes for hours, on a freezing night to get into his party at a Manchester banquet hall. “I think he’s going to win ... everything. I think so,” said Grace McCarthy of Salem, N.H., inside.
The focus for both parties now turns south, where primaries in Nevada and South Carolina — states with demographics vastly different from the mostly white Iowa and New Hampshire — are scheduled in the next several weeks.