An extraordinary battle could be shaping up between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton after both candidates win crucial victories, while Jeb Bush drops out

An extraordinary battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could be taking shape in the 2016 presidential race after the two candidates won crucial victories in the Republican and Democratic contests for the White House.

In a dramatic and potentially pivotal night for both parties on Saturday, Trump, the billionaire property mogul and political outsider, won in South Carolina by a wide margin, while Clinton, the Democratic party establishment’s pick, clinched victory in the Nevada caucuses.

Both the Republican and Democratic contests remain open, with Trump and Clinton facing significant challenges in contests that have so far been highly unpredictable. But there was a sense that the contours of both races had sharpened on a night that Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, dropped out of the race.

“In this campaign I have stood my ground refusing to bend to the political winds,” an emotional Bush told supporters after securing just 8% of the vote. “Because despite what you may have heard, ideas matter, policy matters.”

On the Republican side, primary voters appear to believe otherwise, opting in large numbers for Trump, the bombastic frontrunner who has eschewed a conventional, policy-based campaign for one based around emotions and public confrontations, such as his encounter this week with Pope Francis.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump’s victory speech: ‘When you win, it’s beautiful.’

Trump made no mention of Bush’s decision to pull out of the race in his concession speech in Spartanburg. But he briefly congratulated Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who in effect were tied on about 22%, saying “it’s not easy” running for president.

“It’s tough, it’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s vicious,” Trump said. “When you win, it’s beautiful.”

Because of the way South Carolina apportions attendees to the party convention that chooses the Republican nominee, Trump was poised to secure virtually all of the state’s delegates, even though he won only a third of the vote.



Clinton’s victory over democratic socialist Bernie Sanders in Nevada was considerably narrower than Trump’s over Cruz and Rubio, after the independent senator from Vermont once again put in a better-than-expected performance, making significant inroads into the former secretary of state’s Latino votes.

After winning the Nevada caucuses 53% to 47%, Clinton seized on the much-needed victory as aides claimed momentum was on her side after Sanders held her to an effective tie in Iowa and convincingly beat her in New Hampshire.

“Some may have doubted us but we never doubted each other,” she told supporters in Las Vegas.

“The fight is on – the future that we want is within our grasp.”

Despite the fact both Trump and Clinton have newfound momentum, winning two of their first three nomination contests, major obstacles remain. Rivals on both the Republican and Democratic sides will now broaden their challenges across the country, 10 days away from the crucial Super Tuesday primaries on 1 March.

Before that the two parties switch states, with Democrats heading to South Carolina, and Republicans to Nevada.

Clinton has enjoyed a formidable 20-point lead in recent polls in South Carolina, where her backing from African Americans is looking more durable than that of Latino voters. She is also leading in 10 of the 12 states that will hold Democratic primaries between 1 and 8 March, again partly thanks to her overwhelming support among black voters, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released this week.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hillary Clinton tells supporters: ‘The fight is on.’

Trump, who won an impressive 33% of the South Carolina vote, enjoys a more than 20-point lead in Nevada, according to polling averages. The billionaire has been leading in the polls in almost all of those states except Texas, where Cruz, the state’s senator, holds a home advantage.

Cruz, who came third in the South Carolina race, on 22.3% of the vote after nearly all the precincts had been counted, and Rubio, who had edged ahead into second position, with 22.5%, are close on the heels of the former host of the TV show The Apprentice.

The arch-conservative Cruz, who beat Trump in the first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa earlier this month, told his volunteers: “We are the only campaign that has beaten, and can beat, Donald Trump.”

Earlier on Saturday he had attended the funeral of the Antonin Scalia, the conservative supreme court justice whose unexpected death, opening up a seat on the bench, has introduced a sense in both Republican and Democratic campaigns that 2016 could be a monumental election.

“This election will be a referendum on the supreme court,” said Cruz. “I tell you this, I cannot wait to be on the debate stage with Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, or whatever other socialist they nominate, and make the case against their radical vision of the constitution that would strip away life, and marriage, and religious liberty, and the second amendment,” he said, referring to the right to bear arms.

However, it was Rubio, who scraped into the symbolically important second place ahead of Cruz by a fraction of a percentage point, who may get the more significant boost from South Carolina’s results.

Experts said he stands to gain the most from Bush exiting the race, a decision that clears the way for Rubio, his one-time acolyte, in the important state of Florida, which has a winner-takes-all process for appointing its large number of delegates. In his speech to supporters Rubio said he had “incredible respect and admiration” for Bush, calling him “the greatest governor in the history of Florida”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has announced the suspension of his campaign. Photograph: Mark Makela/Getty Images

After securing his best-placed finish of the campaign so far, Rubio sought to claim the mantle of the establishment challenger to both Trump and Cruz. “After tonight this has become a three-person race and we will win the nomination,” Rubio said.

The Ohio governor John Kasich and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who came fifth and sixth respectively in South Carolina and indicated they intend to stay in the race, are likely to beg to differ. Kasich, in particular, will be desperate not to be squeezed out of the race before the latter stages, where he thinks he is best poised to win midwestern states.

Jeb Bush’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race, after finishing fourth in a state he had fought so hard to win, even eliciting the help of his brother, George W Bush, marked a political nadir for the Republican establishment.

The former Florida governor collected a war chest of $118m last year and accrued the backing of many in the party’s hierarchy who believed it was Bush, who has a Mexican-born wife and a comparatively moderate approach to immigration reform, who offered the most broad appeal for a general electorate.

When he announced his candidacy in June, he was polling at around 10%, which turned out to be the upper limit for his performance. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee who lost to Barack Obama in 2012, said Bush had “followed his family’s pattern of putting country above himself”.

Yet Romney, Bush and other establishment giants appeared greatly diminished on Saturday. After years of being buffeted by a rebellious Tea Party movement, the GOP’s presidential race is now being dominated by the brash, controversial TV star commonly referred to as The Donald.

Additional reporting by Sam Levin in Reno, Nicky Woolf in Las Vegas, Scott Bixby in Columbia and Adam Gabbatt in Daniel Island