Yesterday's #SuperTuesday results https://t.co/P9FYQ8bQ9U
✅Trump: 7
✅Clinton: 7
✅Sanders: 4
✅Cruz: 3
✅Rubio: 1 pic.twitter.com/Grsk14NlqV— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 2, 2016
For this week’s election update, we focus on the Super Tuesday election. Two candidates in particular had great nights and the rest fell short of the line.
Donald Trump divides and conquers
Donald Trump won seven states, and while many predicted he would win big, he won really big. He gained 319 delegates and now has a commanding lead in the Republican field. There is no evidence to support that he won’t be the Republican nominee for president unless something comes out of nowhere and brings Trump down.
Marco Rubio has begun playing Trump’s game by playing on the schoolyard bully insults, but this is something he should have done months ago. Had Rubio done this sooner, he would have won more than one state.
Hillary Clinton wins big
Clinton showed that she has captured the black and Hispanic vote, and this could possibly mean the end for Bernie Sanders. This doesn’t mean that Clinton is the nominee, but with over 400 superdelegates, it will be an uphill battle for Sanders. She won seven states in total, while Sanders only won four. Sanders won big with Colorado, normally a swing state in the general election, but the other states he won had mostly rural, white populations. It’s a rule of thumb in a general election that if you don’t have the black and Latino vote, it’s impossible to win the White House.
End of the road for Ben Carson
After a poor performance in every single primary and caucus, it appears that Ben Carson’s longshot White House bid has finally hit a wall. Carson on Wednesday said he sees no “path forward in light of last evening’s Super Tuesday primary results,” signaling that he will likely suspend his campaign. He also said that he will not attend the debate this week but has not officially dropped out. At this point, Carson is staying in the race either to make a point, which he hasn’t really done, or to get as much public recognition as possible to increase sales of his books.
Opinion editor Anthony Torres is a political science junior and may be reached at [email protected]