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New York primary live: Trump wins as Clinton and Sanders battle it out New York primary live: Trump and Clinton win big in Empire State
(35 minutes later)
2.48am BST
02:48
Hillary Clinton wins New York Democratic primary
With 38.1% of precincts reporting, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has been declared the winner of the New York Democratic primary.
She currently leads Vermont senator Bernie Sanders 60.5% to 39.5% in the Empire State, a hard-won victory for the former senator from New York and a bitter loss for Sanders, who campaigned hard in New York with rally audiences that numbered in the tens of thousands.
2.43am BST
02:43
Mona Chalabi
I’ve just been asked by a coworker why exit polls suggest that Clinton will beat Sanders by just four percentage points - that seems very different to the results so far, which show the former secretary of state over 20 percentage points ahead of the Vermont senator.
The explanation is relatively straightforward. Just 30% of the votes have been counted - at such an early point in the night, it’s likely that Clinton’s huge lead is simply because votes have been counted in areas where she has been more successful. Once all the votes are in, it’s likely that Sanders will have caught up considerably.
WNYC have a handy map which shows results alongside familiar neighborhood names. So far, Clinton is performing well in Soundview and Bruckner (in the Bronx) as well as the Upper East side. Sanders meanwhile is doing well in Greenpoint.
2.43am BST
02:43
Mona Chalabi
I’ve just been asked by a coworker why exit polls suggest that Clinton will beat Sanders by just four percentage points - that seems very different to the results so far which show Clinton is over 20 percentage points ahead of the Vermont senator.
The explanation is relatively straightforward: Just 16% of the votes have been counted - at such an early point in the night, it’s likely that Clinton’s huge lead is simply because votes have been counted in areas where she has been more successful. Once all the votes are in, it’s likely that Sanders would have caught up considerably.WNYC have a handy map which shows results alongside familiar neighborhood names. So far, Clinton is performing well in Soundview and Bruckner (in the Bronx) as well as the Upper East side. Sanders, meanwhile, is doing well in Greenpoint.
2.43am BST
02:43
Lucia Graves
Remember #NYValues? Looks like NYers do too. No sooner did the polls close at 9pm than it was announced Donald Trump had won in his home state. He just delivered a typically upbeat victory speech, saying: “I can think of nowhere that I would rather have this victory.” That victory was a foregone conclusion at least as far back as January when Ted Cruz first cast his aspersions about Trump’s “New York values”. It seemed like a strategic enough thing to say then – after all, New York comes so late in the primary season it typically doesn’t matter. But this year it did, and those much-repeated words have come back to haunt him.
For months Cruz has tried to explain away the ill-considered phrase, saying that he was talking about the politicians, not the people, among other things. But the soundbite has stuck with him, thanks in part to Trump, who last night accused him of outright hating New York and declaring “no New Yorker can work for Ted Cruz”. There are other things working against Cruz in the state, like the fact that there are almost no pockets of the evangelical conservatism he preaches, but essentially Trump is right: New York values mean a vote against Cruz.
2.41am BST
02:41
Continuing his speech, Donald Trump pledged to fix America’s economy, which he called his “wheelhouse.”
“We are gonna be so strong again, we are gonna be literally, legitimately so strong again,” Trump said. “We don’t have much of a race anymore, going by what I see on television. Senator Cruz... I’ve pretty much knocked the hell out of him.”
“Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they win those delegates with voters and voting,” Trump said, critiquing the delegate battles he has recently lost to Ted Cruz as “crooked.”
“We’re going to go into the convention, I think, as the winner,” Trump promised. “I wanna just thank everybody, I have great, great admiration and praise for the city of New York and the state of New York. I can think of nowhere I would rather have this victory!”
“Thank you everybody, and thank you New York! We love New York! We love New York!”
2.39am BST
02:39
Updated
at 2.40am BST
2.37am BST
02:37
Donald Trump: 'Nobody is gonna mess with us'
After the audience was concussed by Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York on full volume, billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump told the assembled crowd of media and supporters at Trump Tower that “nobody is going to mess with us” when he is elected president.
“It’s just incredible,” Trump said, “I guess we’re close to 70%, and we’re gonna end at a very high level, and get a lot more delegates than anybody projected, even in their wildest dreams.”
“I really wanna thank my team - my team has been amazing,” Trump said, referencing recent tumult in his campaign’s organization. “It’s a team of unity, it’s evolving, but people don’t understand.”
2.29am BST
02:29
Ben Jacobs
John Weaver, the top strategist for Ohio governor John Kasich, was confident early in the evening that his campaign would pick up some delegates in New York. He went on to note that Cruz’s collapse in the Empire State presages what will be a rough night for him next week.
“What is happening to Cruz in New York is corresponding with what we’re seeing in the other April 26 states,” Weaver said. “He’s cast in a very narrow lane.”
2.26am BST
02:26
Amber Jamieson
Amber Jamieson reports from Williamsburg, where a “Beers for Bernie” event has already begun...
Polls close in 5 mins and the Beers for Bernie event in Williamsburg now has a decent crowd spread out. pic.twitter.com/zzmgPsYwY1
The TVs at the Beers for Bernie event in Williamsburg were only turned on shortly before the polls closed at 9 pm, the crowd busy chatting with friends and hanging in their Bernie T-shirts.
Moments after, Donald Trump’s face appeared on screen as the projected Republican winner, with MSNBC calling his win “significant.”
One girl put her head in her hands, while another twenty-something scrunched up her face in disgust. “It’s impossible,” muttered a Sanders supporter. Then, a small cheer went up around the bar when it popped up that the Democrats race between Sanders and Clinton was “too close to call.”
A group of mates raised their beers and toasted “to Bernie.”
“I’m thinking positive,” said Charlie Le Grice, a 30-year-old actor. She’d spent the day working as a volunteer on the Sanders campaign, driving potential voters to polling stations and helping with affidavits for those whose Democratic registration had been improperly recorded.
“I’m nervous because of what happened today,” said Le Grice. “It was reminiscent of what happened in Florida [during the 2000 election], I didn’t think we’d ever see that again.”
2.22am BST
02:22
Here’s video of the promised LED change at the Empire State Building:
2.21am BST
02:21
Ben Jacobs
Ninety miles from New York, Ted Cruz debuted a new stump speech to a crowd of more than 100 people at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Preemptively dismissing Donald Trump’s expected blowout as “a politician tonight winning his home state,” Cruz sought to reframe himself as outsider similar to Bernie Sanders.
“I am an outsider, Bernie Sanders is an outsider,” he proclaimed. “Both with the same diagnosis, but both with very different paths to healing. Millions of Americans have chosen one of these outsiders.” Cruz went on to add that “Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy were outsiders.” Yet Cruz contrasted himself not with Sanders or Reagan or even Trump. Instead, he cast the competition as fellow Harvard Law grad in went into politics, Barack Obama.
The Texas senator sought to introduce “yes we will” as new slogan in contrast to Obama’s “yes we can.” As Cruz orated: “Our sitting president ran on a slogan that should have been a great first step… It promised us, “yes we can.” In his analysis “Yes we can” was a recognition of the hope that we can and should recover.
“The problem was that Barack Obama’s prescriptions only led to more elitist control from Washington. Less freedom for the people.”
The rhetoric marked another attempt for Cruz to try to further distinguish himself as an outsider and appeal the insurgent mood among Republican primary voters in 2016. Cruz has long railed against “the Washington cartel” but this marked a new framing of that message with more optimistic rhetoric.
The question is how Cruz can weather what will be a tough stretch for the Texas senator. After several weeks where he won a victory in Wisconsin with the support of much of the state’s Republican establishment and then scored wins in states like North Dakota and Colorado which chose their delegates via convention, he now faces a rough April. Not only is Trump expected to win New York in a blowout but the Republican frontrunner is favored in all five Atlantic states holding primaries on April 26.
2.21am BST
02:21
Lucia Graves
Bernie Sanders has zero margin for error tonight and early exit polls suggest he may just be walking that perfect line. He’s creaming Hillary Clinton by 72 points to 28 among voters under 30, according to early CNN exit polls, and he also has a significant lead among whites. The polls have been tightening in recent weeks, even before candidates turned their attention to New York. And it may be that the race has tightened more than anyone believed.
Nate Silvers has made a convincing case that, given enough time to make his case to the American public, Sanders will outperform expectations. But it could be too little, too late. There are only 17 contests left in this election cycle, and almost all of the big ones to come are closed primaries – as New York is – a fact that hurts Sanders.
2.18am BST
02:18
CNN has released its exit poll numbers - surveys of voters taken after they leave their voting place, which are considered the most accurate polling data available - and the numbers on the Republican side show the true breadth of Donald Trump’s victory in New York tonight.
The billionaire Republican frontrunner is shown to have won supermajorities of nearly every demographic group who voted in today’s Republican primary: men (59%), women (56%), all age groups 30 and older, whites (59%), and, perhaps most surprisingly, New Yorkers of all education levels.
Long described as the candidate of those with lower education levels, Trump won supermajorities among those with high school diplomas or less (67%), some college education (59%), a college degree (53%) and those with postgraduate degrees (50%).
2.06am BST2.06am BST
02:0602:06
More on Donald Trump’s victory: The billionaire Republican frontrunner was widely expected to take New York, his home state and the headquarters of his real estate and media empire, but the night is far from over for Texas senator Ted Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich, who are holding out hope that they will have been able to chip away enough at his support in targeted congressional districts to prevent a full sweep of the state’s 95 delegates.More on Donald Trump’s victory: The billionaire Republican frontrunner was widely expected to take New York, his home state and the headquarters of his real estate and media empire, but the night is far from over for Texas senator Ted Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich, who are holding out hope that they will have been able to chip away enough at his support in targeted congressional districts to prevent a full sweep of the state’s 95 delegates.
Should Trump win 50% or more of the vote in New York, he will take home all of the state’s 14 at-large delegates. For every congressional district he wins an absolute majority in, he’ll take home three additional delegates each. Should he fail to clear the 50% threshold, however, he will lose one of the three delegates to the second-place finisher - at this point, likely Kasich.Should Trump win 50% or more of the vote in New York, he will take home all of the state’s 14 at-large delegates. For every congressional district he wins an absolute majority in, he’ll take home three additional delegates each. Should he fail to clear the 50% threshold, however, he will lose one of the three delegates to the second-place finisher - at this point, likely Kasich.
UpdatedUpdated
at 2.07am BSTat 2.07am BST
2.01am BST2.01am BST
02:0102:01
Donald Trump wins New York Republican primaryDonald Trump wins New York Republican primary
Well, that was quick!Well, that was quick!
Seconds after the polls closed in the Empire State, the Associated Press - as well as CNN, MSNBC, and most of the other networks - have called the New York Republican primary for billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump.Seconds after the polls closed in the Empire State, the Associated Press - as well as CNN, MSNBC, and most of the other networks - have called the New York Republican primary for billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump.
1.59am BST1.59am BST
01:5901:59
Lauren GambinoLauren Gambino
Hillary Clinton is holding what she hopes will be a victory party in the ballroom of the Sheraton in Midtown because nothing says thank you New York quite like a night out in Times Square.Hillary Clinton is holding what she hopes will be a victory party in the ballroom of the Sheraton in Midtown because nothing says thank you New York quite like a night out in Times Square.
The ballroom is decorated with Hillary campaign signs and milling with chipper supporters wearing stickers and buttons. Among them is Whitney Peterson, a sales representative, who crossed state lines from New Jersey to hear Clinton speak.The ballroom is decorated with Hillary campaign signs and milling with chipper supporters wearing stickers and buttons. Among them is Whitney Peterson, a sales representative, who crossed state lines from New Jersey to hear Clinton speak.
“I just wanted to be a part of history if she does become the first female president of the United States,” Peterson said, before quickly correcting herself: “Or when she does.”“I just wanted to be a part of history if she does become the first female president of the United States,” Peterson said, before quickly correcting herself: “Or when she does.”
Peterson, who will vote in the New Jersey primary, said she supported Barack Obama in 2008, but believes this year is Clinton’s time. “We’ve just both grown a lot since then,” she said.Peterson, who will vote in the New Jersey primary, said she supported Barack Obama in 2008, but believes this year is Clinton’s time. “We’ve just both grown a lot since then,” she said.
At around 8:30, a band began to play covers of singles straight off the iTunes top pop singles list starting with Pharrell’s Uptown Funk. Playing at the moment of filing: Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off – which she’s hoping won’t be necessary after all is said and done tonight.At around 8:30, a band began to play covers of singles straight off the iTunes top pop singles list starting with Pharrell’s Uptown Funk. Playing at the moment of filing: Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off – which she’s hoping won’t be necessary after all is said and done tonight.
1.50am BST
01:50
Texas senator Ted Cruz, likely anticipating a bit of a thumping in the New York Republican primary, is giving remarks in Philadelphia tonight. The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs has captured an early-night concession by Cruz, who told the assembled supporters and press that Donald Trump would win tonight’s primary.
Cruz preemptively concedes that Trump will win New York tonight
“This is the year of the outsider and I am an outsider; Bernie Sanders is an outsider,” Cruz said, followed later by this comment that is still leaving us scratching our heads:
Ted Cruz: America has always been her best when she is lying down with her back on the mat
Full context: An uncharacteristically positive and hopeful tone in Cruz’s speech, which have heretofore been more high-octane than uplifting.
“You may have been knocked down, but America has always been best when she it lying down with her back on the mat, and the crowd has given the final count,” Cruz said. “It is time as us for a nation to shake it off and be who we were destined to be. Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise.”
“Here is the truth: You don’t need me, or any politician,” Cruz concluded. “But we do need each other, all of us. Coming together as one, as we the people, because not only do we say yes we can, beginning here and now we pledge, to each and every one of us, yes we will.”
Updated
at 1.54am BST
1.44am BST
01:44
Good news for New York City voters: CNN will announce its projections of who will win tonight’s primary contests using the LED display on the Empire State Building, with different colors corresponding to the victor.
The Empire State Building, once the tallest building in the world, will turn dark blue if Hillary Clinton is projected as the winner, and light blue if Bernie Sanders is. On the Republican side, a Donald Trump victory will mean a dark, Sauron-esque red color, an unlikely victory by Ted Cruz would turn the top of the tower “coral,” in Jake Tapper’s words, and a victory by Ohio governor John Kasich would make the tower purple.
When CNN projects winners tonight, the Empire State building will light up https://t.co/1a8SwBgnNk #NYPrimary https://t.co/5CUP1HNPKu
1.29am BST
01:29
Ben Jacobs has an interesting historical throwback to the 1992 Democratic presidential primary, the last time that New York played much of a role in choosing a party nominee:
#TBT to the last time the New York primary matted and the #gaffe that was #gamechange https://t.co/OgjydG9ZuA pic.twitter.com/VRm58eVmbT
1.23am BST
01:23
Mona Chalabi
Who will win in New York? Mona Chalabi has a primer on historic voting trends in the Empire State, expected results tonight and what their impact will be on Wednesday and beyond.
Current polling averages suggest a clear win for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who is 12 percentage points ahead of rival Bernie Sanders. In the Republican race, the frontrunner has an even larger lead – Donald Trump is 30 percentage pointsahead in the polls, according to polling averages.
There is, however, good reason to think that the final numbers won’t exactly mirror those predictions. A poll for CBS News conducted by YouGov earlier this month found that 14% of New York Democratic voters were open to changing their minds about their preferred candidates. And, although the former secretary of state’s average lead has been quite consistent since the start of the month, individual polls have reached very different conclusions about the gap between her and her leftwing opponent – ranging between six and 18 percentage points in polls this month alone.
However, there are other factors that might make those polling numbers less flexible. The deadline for switching party registration in New York was 193 days ago on 9 October – other states have far shorter deadlines. This is likely to be a large drawback for Sanders, who draws so much of his support from voters who identify as independent (in the states that have held primaries so far, as much as 50% of Sanders voters have said they are independent in exit polls). So, although the Vermont senator’s support has risen considerably over the past month, that won’t necessarily translate into additional votes for the candidate.
Related: Who will win in New York? Your cheat sheet for the presidential primary
1.07am BST
01:07
One hour before polls close across New York
Scott Bixby
Good evening! For those just joining us, we’re less than an hour away from polls closing across the Empire State, where for the first time in a generation, a pair of close national races means that New York’s presidential primary election actually matters.
Both Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump are heavily favored to win the night, with home-state advantages coupled with campaign infrastructures concentrated in New York City. As both campaigns have become less about nebulous “momentum” than bareknuckle boxing for delegate loyalty, however, New York presents possible pickup opportunities for other candidates - or, at least, chances to stymie the frontrunners’ path to the nomination.
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ fingers are tightly crossed for a better-than-expected finish in New York driven by young voters who have turned out by the thousands to see Sanders speak in recent weeks, but difficulty registering as Democrats in time may complicate that plan. He and Clinton will be duking it out over New York’s 247 Democratic delegates, to be awarded proportionally.
On the Republican side, an anticipated thumping by the billionaire Republican frontrunner in his home state could spell a major delegate victory for a candidate who has faced a string of losses to Texas senator Ted Cruz as of late. If Trump can capture 50% or more of the vote statewide, he’ll automatically walk away with all 14 of the state’s at-large delegates. But if he wants to sweep New York, he’ll need to win each of the state’s 27 congressional districts with a similar 50% or more threshold to win each district’s three delegates.
That’s where Cruz and John Kasich’s plan comes into play: If they succeed in chipping away Trump’s lead to below that threshold, the delegates will be distributed proportionately, blocking Trump’s sweep and taking precious delegates from the only candidate who can feasibly win the necessary 1,237-delegate majority to claim the Republican nomination outright.
Where we are: The Guardian’s crack team of political reporters, commentators and analysts are working across the state to bring you up-to-the-second news from tonight’s primary. Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts will be in the newsroom, along with data queen Mona Chalabi and myself, Scott Bixby.
Sabrina Siddiqui and Lauren Gambino will be with Clinton at her campaign watch party at the Sheraton New York; David Smith will be partying it up at Trump Tower with its owner; Ben Jacobs will be with Cruz in Philadelphia; Megan Carpentier will be gauging voter reactions and documenting voting problems in the Hudson River valley; and Adam Gabbatt and Amber Jamieson will be pub-crawling their way through watch parties organized by different campaigns and supporters across New York City.
There’s a lot on the line in the Empire State – now let’s get to the results!
Updated
at 1.21am BST
1.00am BST
01:00
Ben Jacobs
The Cruz event is taking place in the atrium of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia where there are big glass windows looking down to Independence Hall. Unlike most traditional election nights there are no televisions and with a scheduled start of 7 PM, it’s likely that the event will wrap before polls close in New York at 9 PM. Cruz is likely to get blown out there and nab only a handful of the Empire State’s 95 delegates.
Scene at Cruz election night party pic.twitter.com/uWLwvD8fdx
In the meantime, country music blares in the background as a crowd of 100 await the Texas senator who will have both former candidate Carly Fiorina and Senator Mike Lee as warm up acts.
12.52am BST
00:52
Amber Jamieson
Bernie Sanders supporters slowly trickled into the “Beers for Bernie” event at Williamsburg bar Battery Harris this evening. Spicy margaritas and hot wings were $2 off to help punters “feel the Bern” (geddit?).
Dressed in a Brooklyn for Bernie T-shirt, environmental consultant for the film industry, Emellie O’Brien, 27, said she was “optimistic” Sanders could win New York but knew the odds were against him.
Her biggest criticisms were against the state’s voting rules, where Democrats had to be registered six months ago in order to vote, a decision she called “infuriating.”
“It’s very clear voter suppression. We don’t make it easy to vote in this country,” said O’Brien.
“It’s Al Gore all over again,” said her friend Tom Whidden, 26, from Williamsburg, who’d spent yesterday phone banking for the Vermont senator.
Updated
at 1.04am BST
12.17am BST
00:17
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders is speaking to supporters at a campaign event in University Park, Pennsylvania as voting continues in the New York primary.
Watch it here:
12.09am BST
00:09
Megan Carpentier
There was a steady stream of students in and out of the polling station at the State University of New York (Suny) at Albany, but vast numbers of them walked away disappointed at being unable to vote.
For many of them, the problem was that they’d turned in their voter registration or change of address forms to a third-party group on campus running a voter registration drive in March; those forms, turned in to a group the name of which no student could recall, never made it to the county Board of Elections before the registration deadline.
(The Sanders campaign also ran a registration drive, a volunteer and engineering professor said, but their ballots were taken to the board the same day; he couldn’t remember who had run the competing drive either.)
“I guess I have to go figure out if my identity’s been stolen,” said one student who came to the campus center excited to cast his first primary ballot and left uncertain about the electoral process. Poll workers encouraged them and others to go to the Board of Elections office directly, where they could petition an on-duty judge for the right to cast an affidavit (i.e., provisional) ballot.
Others who had been registered via voting drives on campus and thought that meant they could vote on campus found themselves facing a choice: get to class on time, or head off campus to vote in their actual polling locations in Albany County. (Sanders volunteers and vote watchers offered any such students free rides, if they didn’t have their own cars. Few seemed to take them up on it.)
Still some other had ordered absentee ballots but not filled them out, making them ineligible to vote in person, or simply thought they could go to any polling location to cast a ballot, despite being from distant parts of the state.
With all the confusion and the volume of students turned away, the relationship between the poll watchers, many of whom were lawyers volunteering their time, and poll workers were strained. Some workers tried to stymie the watchers’ ability to follow students through the process; others were heard complaining that they were too engaged trying to figure out why so many students were being turned away. And that was before one alleged Board of Election employee dropping off ballots was caught on tape loudly asking poll workers in front of students “Do you think that this is a party JFK would be proud of?” and proclaiming himself “angry” that Sanders was allowed to run as a Democrat.
(Both the failure to turn in voter registration forms and electioneering in a polling location would be violations of election law.)
Meanwhile, poll workers kept having to turn away disappointed students, encouraging them to check their voter registration status well before the general election and thanking them for trying to vote.
At points in the early evening, it seemed like as many students were being turned away as reported success in casting their ballots. One such student said that most of the students in one of her afternoon classes had been barred from the ballot box for one reason or another; for some, it was their first attempt at all.
11.46pm BST
23:46
Are Bernie Sanders supporters spacing on the date?
Have spent 20 mins hanging at a Beers for Bernie event in Williamsburg and I am still the first and only attendee here, says bartender.