Trump rolls into Las Vegas with clear lead in several states

DONALD TRUMP is ahead in three quarters of the next dozen states to vote in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, including Nevada, which makes its choice today.

Of the 11 states voting in “Super Tuesday” on March 1, latest polls showed the billionaire with seemingly insurmountable margins in Massachusetts, Alabama and Vermont, with narrower advantages in Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Alaska.

“Trump, amazingly, is in a commanding position to become the Republican presidential nominee,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Centre for Politics.

“If someone is going to beat Trump then [Marco] Rubio probably has the best shot but the hour is growing late. You have to start winning, but where?”

Mr Trump won easy victories in the previous two states to vote, South Carolina and New Hampshire.

As the candidates arrived in Nevada, the property mogul said he could “run the table”. But he added: “I have competitors who are very smart people.”

Mr Rubio claimed 70 per cent of Republicans would never vote for Mr Trump and, as others dropped out, it would become a two-person race that he would win by “uniting the party”.

Latest polls in Nevada showed Mr Trump with a lead of at least 16 points over Mr Rubio and Ted Cruz, the US Senator from Texas, who was focusing his campaign yesterday on rural areas.

However, polls in the state are notoriously unreliable due to the transient working population in Las Vegas.

Mr Rubio, the 44-year-old senator from Florida, spent six years in Las Vegas when a boy. During his childhood he and his family also briefly became Mormons, and members of the religion make up one quarter of the Republicans expected to vote in Nevada.

Mr Cruz was reported last night to have asked his communications director, Rick Tyler, to resign after he posted a video falsely depicting comments by Mr Rubio about the Bible.