A good night for Hillary Clinton.
Once again, Texas delivered for a Clinton.
The Texas Tribune projects that Hillary Clinton has easily won a majority of the statewide vote in the Texas Democratic primary, dominating her rival for the party’s nomination, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
As she struggled early on against Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire, her campaign promised the tide would turn once the primary turned to states with substantive minority voting blocs – states like Texas.
Clinton was projected to rack up wins elsewhere Tuesday, in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, according to national media outlets. Sanders was projected to win Vermont, his home state.
[…]
Hillary Clinton only held one public event in the state – in Houston. Instead, she delegated campaigning duties to her husband who also worked as a Democratic National Committee staffer on the 1972 George McGovern presidential campaign.
“This is a really impressive result and it reflects Hillary’s ties to this city and this county,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, at the campaign’s San Antonio victory party. “She did not need an introduction to Texas because of those deep roots here and Sen. Sanders was a newcomer, so she had almost a home-court advantage but she handled it very effectively.”
Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and mayor of San Antonio Henry Cisneros said Clinton drew from a diverse coalition of support among Texas voters.
“It’s a combination of the loyalty of the Hispanic and African-American communities in Texas who appreciate what she’s done and the groundedness of other Democratic groups like the unions who can distinguish between the abstractions of a candidate like Bernie Sanders and a get-it-done experienced candidate like Hillary Clinton,” Cisneros said.
Here are the statewide results. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll see that she did very well in individual Senate districts as well, which is how the delegates get doled out. All in all, about as good a night for her as could have been expected.
Not so great for Ted Cruz, despite winning Texas.
Ted Cruz on Tuesday was winning the presidential primary in Texas, carrying his second state in the Republican race for the White House, and apparently notching a third with a narrow edge in Oklahoma.
The Iowa caucus winner was projected to beat billionaire Donald Trump, who had posed a serious threat to Cruz in Texas, even tying him in one recent poll. Cruz’s campaign, not wanting to take any chances, sent the candidate on an 11th-hour tour of the state Monday to shore up support.
In early, unofficial returns Cruz was hovering around 40 percent of the GOP vote, with Trump about 10 percentage points behind.
After news networks called Texas for Cruz, chants of “Ted!” broke out at his election night party at the Redneck County Club.
Shortly after the Texas call, Cruz was also projected to win the Oklahoma primary. Cruz led Trump by about five percentage points, 35 percent to 30 percent. Cruz’s performance outside Texas and its northern neighbor on Tuesday night was otherwise disappointing.
The outcome was a far cry from predictions six months ago, when Cruz called Tuesday’s SEC primary his “firewall,” predicting it would be the day on which he made major progress toward securing the nomination. Up until the final hours before polls closed Tuesday, Cruz was arguing that he was running “neck and neck” with Trump across the Super Tuesday states.
In actuality, Donald Trump kicked Cruz’s butt in most of the other states. But hey’ it could have been worse for Cruz. He could have been Marco Rubio, after all. Statewide GOP results are here.
I did not stay up till the bitter end, but there’s plenty of info out there if you still need it. Basically, it’s looking a lot like Clinton versus Trump. I don’t expect either of them to have a clear field after tonight, but they both sure have a clear path.