INDIANAPOLIS — Donald Trump won the Indiana primary Tuesday, knocking Ted Cruz out of the Republican presidential race.
Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, delaying her final victory even if the delegate math remains fundamentally unchanged.
Trump was headed to a 53 percent to nearly 37 percent victory, even with John Kasich winning less than 10 percent of the vote. Sanders was defeating Clinton by 53 percent to 47 percent.
As Indiana Republicans headed to the polls Tuesday, neither the stakes nor the volume of the presidential race could have been higher.
Trump will now be on a relatively simple path to accumulating the delegates he needs to win the Republican nomination outright. Cruz needed to win, or at least limit Trump’s delegate haul, otherwise the nomination will be decided before the convention.
For Cruz and Kasich, the only path to the nomination was through hundreds of delegates coming unbound after the first ballot at the Republican National Convention. Trump can still win through the primary process and after this las seven wins is in a good position to do so.
Kasich and Cruz briefly aligned to try to deny Trump a majority, but the move seemed to backfire. Cruz announced Tuesday that his path was non-existent. Kasich has only won his home state of Ohio.
Trump opened the day repeating tabloid allegations against Ted Cruz’s father. “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, before the shooting?” Trump asked. “It’s horrible.”
Indiana Republican Primary Results InsideGov
This elicited a stern rebuke from Cruz. “This man is a pathological liar,” the Texas senator said. “He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.”
Trump fired back in a statement that Cruz is “unhinged” and his “ridiculous outburst” revealed a “desperate candidate” who lacks “the temperament to be the president of the United States.”
Rafael Cruz, the Trump target and Texas senator’s father, has been rallying pastors to support his son.
“I implore every member of the Body of Christ to vote according to the word of God. And vote for the candidate that stands for the word of God and the Constitution of the United States of America,” he said, drawing Trump’s ire.
These appeals fell flat in Indiana Tuesday, leaving Cruz without a path forward.
Indiana Democrats are also voting Tuesday. The polls generally show a closer fight between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But that race is closer to being settled. Clinton doesn’t yet have the delegates she needs to clinch the nomination, but Sanders is unlikely at this point to ever catch her.
That is exactly the outcome Trump is looking for in Indiana. It will be a while, perhaps not until California votes in June, before he can win a majority of delegates. But he can make it mathematically implausible for his rivals to stop him.
There were signs of discontent from voters on both sides of the aisle.
“If my grandchildren look back on this election years later and ask me how I voted, should the two candidates be Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, I don’t think I could in good conscience tell them I voted for either one of those people,” Cruz volunteer Greg Ferguson told the Washington Examiner. “That’s what’s so difficult about all this.”
“I actually voted for Bernie because I think Hillary is like evil,” Jennifer Kersage of Indianapolis told the Examiner. “And I would say I usually just vote for Democrats across the board, but I can’t vote for her.”
Kersage added that Clinton “lied about those emails” and “if she didn’t keep her husband happy, how could she keep the nation happy.”
“She’s a realist,” countered Sheila Little of Indianapolis, a Clinton voter. “It would be nice having a woman in the White House. I think that her ability to use strategies to succeed in D.C. might not be as fraught with hatred as it was with Obama.”
Trade, jobs and Wall Street are potent issues for both Trump and Sanders among Hoosiers.
“If we have Hillary, we’re going to have more of the same,” an elderly Sanders voter who refuses to support Clinton in November told the Examiner. “Carrier is going to keep on going with Hillary’s blessing, Wall Street’s going to keep on doing what they do with Wall Street’s blessing, we’re going to keep on making bad trade deals with Hillary’s blessing.”
James Reid, a political science major at Franklin College from the south side of Indianapolis, was originally a Carly Fiorina supporter. Cruz announced Fiorina as his running mate before the Indiana primary, so Reid is with the senator.
But is he #NeverTrump? “I really don’t want to vote for Trump,” Reid sighed deeply, “but if i have no other options that I deem viable, I’ll vote for Trump to stop Hillary.”
He may have to.
There were 57 delegates at stake for Republicans in Indiana. Twenty-seven go to the statewide winner plus three so-called RNC delegates. Another 27 are winner-take-all by congressional district.
Trump won them all.
The Democrats have 92 delegates up for grabs, allocated proportionally.
While the end is near for both parties’ presidential races, Indiana left Sanders alive and ended Cruz’s bid.
