Donald Trump was plunged into darkness on Sunday night as he made a boastful speech in Georgia after his conclusive victory in the South Carolina primary.

An apparent technical malfunction - which was later revealed to be the job of a protester - turned the stage lights off in Atlanta, prompting The Donald to get his crowd chanting at the building management.

But there are no signs of his presidential hopes dimming as he sits at the top of the polls in ten of the 14 states voting in GOP primaries in the next two weeks.

Trump has won primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, beating his fellow Republican candidates by ten percentage points in the latter state.

Recent polls show Trump ahead in Nevada, Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Louisiana, according to RealClearPolitics.com.

He is continuing to campaign strongly, and took a victory lap in Atlanta following his South Carolina win.

The lights went out at Trump's rally on Sunday in Atlanta, Georgia and he used the snafu as a teachable moment about negotiation

When the lights went out, Trump said it was 'better lighting' and that they would save electricity by keeping the lights off

When the auditorium turned the lights back on, Trump got the crowd to chant until the building manager dimmed the lights again

Once the lights were turned off again, Trump continued his speech in the darkness and brought his son on stage

'Such a beautiful victory, such a conclusive victory,' he said of South Carolina, boasting of winning every congressional district and picking up every delegate.

The billionaire captured 32.5 per cent of the vote in a six-way primary contest on Saturday.

Second was Rubio with 22.5 per cent. Cruz was just behind him in the third-place position with 22.3 per cent, with barely 1,000 votes separating the two first-term senators.

Former Florida Gov Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson made up the bottom half of the Republican results table with 7.8 per cent, 7.6 per cent and 7.2 per cent, respectively.

Trump now stands at the top of the Republican pack, having earned 61 delegates, which is 50 more than No. 2 vote-getter Sen. Ted Cruz who has just 11.

He has precedent on his side, with no Republican since 1980 winning both South Carolina and New Hampshire and not taking the nomination.

The unlikely Republican front-runner who made his fortune in real estate and reality television, led every poll in South Carolina since mid-November.

The Atlanta rally was Trump's first event since winning all 50 of South Carolina's delegates, beating already high expectations and cementing his status as the Republican front-runner.

Georgia is one of the states that votes on Super Tuesday on March 1.

'We're just doing one after another,' Trump told the thousands of people gathered in a downtown Atlanta convention center.

The billionaire Trump has vowed to spend 'whatever it takes' to lock up the GOP nomination. He has so far invested about $17.5million into his bid, a fraction of what most of the other candidates are spending.

In the midst of Atlanta's rally, Trump turned an apparent lighting malfunction at a speech in Atlanta into an example of negotiation, one of the talents he says he'd bring to the presidency.

While he was speaking to the crowd on Sunday, the lights, which can be hot, went out.

Then some came back on and he said he liked that better.

'Oh, I liked that much better,' Trump said.

He said the bright lights 'were brutal,' joked that they came from 'the dishonest press,' and instructed the stage crew to keep them 'off' - low, really - or 'we won't pay the rent.'

Donald Trump is sitting at the top of the polls in ten of the 14 states voting in GOP primaries in the next two weeks

The billionaire had captured 32.5 per cent of the vote in a six-way primary contest on Saturday in South Carolina

When the lights went out at the Donald Trump rally today, the candidate suggested it was a ploy from 'the dishonest press'

An audience member cheers as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Atlanta on Sunday

'That's the way we have to negotiate for our country,' Trump added.

He led the audience, which he touted as huge, in a chant of, 'turn off the lights, turn off the lights.'

And if the lights keep turning on during his speech at the cavernous Georgia World Congress Center?

Trump says that's an easy answer. 'We say, 'We're not paying, the lights didn't work.' It is ridiculous, we will not pay the rent. And we say, bye-bye.'

Trump later said that it was a protester who but the spotlights on Sunday, according toBusiness Insider.

'They just told me it was the protester that turned the lights off,' he told supporters at the rally.

Lighting director Bob Hunter told The Associated Press that he stepped away from his booth near the front of the stage for a quick bathroom break. Hunter quickly obliged.

He returned to a chaotic scene with shouts in his headset letting him know the lights were off. He said people in the area told him a protester had reached over and pulled a wire.

‘‘I was trying not to be that guy,’’ he said with a sheepish laugh after the rally. ‘‘You’re making me that guy.’’

Trump will be heading to Nevada next. The state holds the next election on the GOP calendar this Tuesday.

Winning states generates headlines, but the nomination is earned by collecting a majority of the delegates awarded in primaries and caucuses. Next up: Nevada's caucuses on Tuesday.

This year, most contests award delegates proportionally, based on each candidate's share of the vote. Beeson and strategists for other campaigns argue that could make it hard for Trump to build a big lead because even the second- and third-place finisher can win delegates.

If one candidate can run up a significant lead, as Trump has begun to, then proportional contests also make it difficult for rivals to catch up.

South Carolina is the perfect example of this problem for Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The state isn't winner-take-all when it comes to delegates, but Trump's strength in all parts of South Carolina allowed him to haul in all 50 delegates awarded in Saturday's primary.

Trump now has 67 delegates. Cruz and Rubio took home none from South Carolina, leaving them with a total of 11 and 10, respectively.

The race for second place was close in South Carolina, with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio receiving percentages of the votes just 0.2 per cent away from each other.

The freshman senators saw less than 1,200 votes separate their placements in the primary, with Rubio edging out Ted Cruz by less than two-tenths of one percentage point.

As results poured in, Cruz assured that he 'has beaten and can beat' billionaire Trump, while Rubio said that it 'has become a three-person race'.

Zach Lee, left, and Nick Martin, both of Newnan, Georgia, cheer after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with audience members while waiting for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to appear at a campaign event in Atlanta on Sunday

An audience member takes a selfie with Trump as he signs autographs at a campaign event in Atlanta on Sunday

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Cruz said he is 'effectively tied for second place' with Florida Sen Marco Rubio, in a finish that he said defied expectations.

The contrast between Trump's triumphant speech on Saturday and Bush's more somber tones from moments earlier was striking as Bush welled up with tears as he dropped from the race.

'I firmly believe the American people must entrust this office to someone who understands that whoever holds it is a servant, not the master,' the former Florida governor said – someone with 'decency.'

'I'm proud of the campaign that we've run to unify the country, and to advocate conservative solutions ... but the people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken and I really respect their decision,' he said.

Ben Carson, who finished the night lower than Bush on the tote board, vowed to stay in the race no matter what.

'I'm not going anywhere,' he told supporters.

Trump never mentioned Bush's name on Saturday night but mocked election analysts who predicted he could lose ground as his rivals quit their campaigns.

After Jeb Bush dropped out of the race on Saturday, the competition shrunk down to five candidates.

Those still fighting for the nominee are Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Carson.

In the modern political era, a candidate usually wins enough delegates to emerge as the presumptive nominee several weeks - or even months - before the end of primary voting.

That happens when the candidate claims so many delegates it's all but impossible for anyone else to catch up.

But the nomination isn't formalized until the party's presidential nominating convention, scheduled for July this year. The last time the Republican nomination wasn't decided before the convention was 1976.

Yet some of Trump's rivals are already talking about the possibility of a 'contested' convention as they envision a series of second- or third-place finishes in the upcoming GOP primaries.

At the convention, a lead in the race for delegates guarantees nothing if the candidate doesn't have an outright majority, said Ben Ginsberg, a leading Republican election attorney.

Under most state party rules, delegates are only required to vote for their candidate on the first ballot at the convention.

'If no one comes into the convention with a majority of delegates, then all bets are off,' Ginsberg said. 'You're dealing with a potentially unruly and independent group of people.'