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Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton win New York primary in landslides

By Eric DuVall
Republican candidate for President Donald Trump reacts when he arrives to speak after his New York Primary victory at Trump Tower on April 19, 2016 in New York City. Hillary Clinton was the projected winner on the Democratic side. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
1 of 7 | Republican candidate for President Donald Trump reacts when he arrives to speak after his New York Primary victory at Trump Tower on April 19, 2016 in New York City. Hillary Clinton was the projected winner on the Democratic side. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

ALBANY, N.Y., April 19 (UPI) -- Donald Trump, the New York real estate developer, and Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, won the New York primaries in landslides, multiple media outlets have predicted.

CNN said Trump has captured more than 60 percent of the vote through early returns. By doing that, he will capture all 14 of the at-large delegates at stake in the New York primary. After that, it will depend on how well he performs in each of the state's 27 congressional districts to determine the delegate haul.

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Trump continued his criticism of the Republican primary process, saying he has all but secured the nomination, despite a string of behind-the-scenes setbacks, where his opponent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, outmaneuvered him to gain a delegate count advantage.

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"We don't have much of a race anymore. Sen. Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated," Trump said. "We've won another state. We have won millions of more votes than Sen. Cruz. Millions and millions more votes than Gov. [John] Kasich. Nearly 300 delegates more than Sen. Cruz."

Initial returns show Clinton carrying between 55 and 60 percent of the vote statewide, in her adopted home state, which twice sent her to the U.S. Senate.

Clinton, speaking to supporters in New York City, said she is closing in on securing her party's nomination over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

"The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight," Clinton said.

Republicans and Democrats from New York City to Buffalo went to the polls Tuesday to help pick their parties' nominees in what is the most consequential presidential primary to be theld here in more than a generation.

The question for both front-runners is whether New York proves the tipping point away from their primary rivals and toward each other in the general election.

If nothing else, it certainly puts Trump and Clinton back on track after seeing the second half of the primary calendar add momentum to their rivals, Cruz and Sanders respectively.

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Cruz, who was given a rough ride in New York from state party leaders, the media and voters after his comments in January belittling "New York values" ran a distant third, garnering a little less than 15 percent of the vote. That number is significant -- candidates needed to have at least 20 percent of the vote statewide to qualify to receive any of the at-large delegates. If that number holds in congressional districts, Cruz could be entirely shut out of the delegate haul, hampering his effort to stop Trump short of the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

Kasich registered 25 percent of the statewide vote and could end up picking off one of the three delegates available in each of New York's 27 congressional districts where Trump did not run up at least 50 percent of the vote.

On the Democratic side, the delegates are awarded proportionally, as well, with Clinton is poised to extend her delegate lead by about two dozen or more over Sanders.

To look at the map, Sanders seemed to have a good night geographically. Sanders appeared to carry nearly every county outside New York City and its suburbs. But Clinton narrowed her margin of defeat upstate and ran up the score in the Big Apple.

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By comparison, Trump won in every part of the state and in many parts with an overwhelming percentage of the vote. Other than a handful of upstate districts where he was falling below 50 percent -- and, notably, in the borough of Manhattan, which Kasich was narrowly winning late Tuesday -- Trump was poised to sweep up to 90 of the 95 delegates up for grabs.

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