Outcome of Tuesday’s primaries in five north-eastern states could spell end of Sanders’ chances for nomination, as Clinton and Trump take aim at each other

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump look poised for big wins in Tuesday’s primary elections in the north-eastern US, continuing their march towards a head-to-head battle for the White House.



Both candidates are aiming to sweep all five states up for grabs in the latest round of voting, which would probably cause Clinton’s supporters to declare the Democratic race all but over, such would be the extent of her lead over her rival, Bernie Sanders.

Trump seems even more likely to dominate the so-called “Acela primary” – a reference to a rail line that runs through Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland – but faces a potentially more complicated route to victory if he cannot clinch the nomination before the Republican convention.

In a foretaste of the potential matchup to come, Trump drew attention to Clinton’s gender while she pointed to his vast wealth.

“The only card she’s got is to play the woman card,” the businessman told Fox News on Tuesday, adding that he would “love to see a woman president, but she’s a disaster”.

Clinton has hardly mentioned Sanders during recent campaign events, instead seeking to portray billionaire Trump as out of touch with ordinary people. “If you want to be president of the United States, you’ve got to get familiar with the United States,” she told MSNBC. “Don’t just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of.”

Although Clinton cannot mathematically land a knockout blow this week, a strong showing would add fresh urgency to the question of how she can gain the loyalty of Sanders’ supporters in November’s general election. She faces an awkward balancing act between satisfying Sanders’ base on the left while also appealing to moderates in the centre.

Asked whether she needs to do more to gain Sanders’ blessing, she referred to her own defeat by Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries in 2008. “I did not put down conditions,” she said on MSNBC. “I said I am supporting Senator Obama ... I hope that we will see the same this year.”

Democrats are vying for 384 delegates in Tuesday’s contests, while Republicans have 172 up for grabs. Candidates and outside groups have spent $13.9m on advertisements in the five states, with Clinton and Sanders dominating the airwaves.

Sanders could face renewed calls to withdraw for the sake of party unity, but his vociferous crowds and massive war chest are sending a different signal. His campaign manager issued a combative message on Tuesday afternoon, accusing the Clinton campaign of saying that by staying in the race, Sanders is helping Trump.

Campaign manager Jeff Weaver wrote in an email: “They’ve used language reserved for traitors to our country, saying we are ‘giving aid and comfort’ to Trump. They are emailing supporters with the subject line ‘What Trump loves about Bernie’.”

The email vows to fight on and contains a photo of Trump with a smiling Hillary and Bill Clinton at a social event with the caption: “Donald Trump and the one candidate in this race he said would make a ‘great president’.”

Earlier, Sanders struck a defiant tone, telling CNN: “I think we’ve got a path to victory, and we’re going to fight this until the last vote is cast.”

In another interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, the Vermont senator complained that his campaign was “handicapped” since the states in play on Tuesday did not allow independents to take part, but added: “We are going to fight through California and then we’ll see what happens.”

He added: “I don’t want to break the bad news to you, but the election is not over yet.”



Trump is the only candidate left in the Republican race who can reach the 1,237 delegates needed to seal the nomination before the July convention, avoiding a potentially ugly floor fight where the party establishment could turn against him.

Opinion polls show him leading Texas senator Ted Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich in all five states on Tuesday, but even if these prove accurate, he could still fall short. Winning in Pennsylvania alone, for example, might not be enough. While the Republican victor there nets 17 delegates, the other 54 can support any candidate at the GOP convention.

“It’s as crooked almost as Hillary Clinton,” Trump said on Monday at a campaign event in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

The vote there will test the effectiveness of his “rebooted” campaign, which has brought in old hands to mastermind convention strategy. Representative Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, a Trump surrogate, told Reuters the team had taken some measures, including printing cards naming its preferred candidates for delegates so that voters going to the polls would know which delegates back Trump.

Before that, “we were just scribbling names on a piece of paper for them”, Barletta said. “I think the organisation coming here to Pennsylvania was just in the nick of time.”

But Cruz’s Pennsylvania chairman, Lowman Henry, told Reuters that he had not witnessed an improved effort by Trump there. “All we’ve noticed is a bunch of whining about it,” he was quoted as saying. “Our response is: they whine, we win.”



Tuesday’s voting is the first to take place since Trump’s rivals announced an extraordinary pact to try to stop him. Kasich will not compete for votes in Indiana, allowing Cruz to take Trump on head to head in the state’s primary on 3 May. Cruz will return the favour for Kasich in Oregon (17 May) and New Mexico (7 June).

Kasich, who has only won his home state of Ohio so far, said of Indiana on NBC’s Today: “I’m not over there running town halls. I’m not over there running television ads. But I am in other states and I will be at the convention.”

He added: “The fact is, I don’t have unlimited resources.”

But he had previously sowed confusion about the strategy by saying that while he will not spend resources in Indiana, his supporters in the state should still vote for him.

Cruz called the alliance “big news” as he campaigned in Indiana on Monday. “That is good for the men and women of Indiana. It’s good for the country to have a clear and direct choice.”

Campaigning in Rhode Island on Monday, Trump dismissed the collaboration as “pathetic”. He told rowdy supporters: “If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics, because it’s a rigged system, because it’s a corrupt enterprise, in politics you’re allowed to collude.”

He needs to win 58% of the remaining delegates to reach the 1,237 target by the end of the primaries. But he received a boost on Tuesday when an NBC News/ SurveyMonkey poll showed him winning more than 50% of support from Republican voters for the first time.

Trump has not remained entirely on-message despite his new advisers’ efforts to rebrand him. On Wednesday he will make a speech on foreign policy in Washington, seeking to silence who critics who question his experience and competence, particularly in light of his attacks on Mexicans and Muslims.