WORLD
Trump, Clinton capture key wins on Super Tuesday
Baku, March 2, AZERTAC
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton took big steps toward securing their parties' presidential nominations on Tuesday with a series of state-by-state victories, but their rivals vowed to keep on fighting, according to Reuters.
On Super Tuesday, the 2016 campaign's biggest day of state-by-state nominating contests, Trump, 69, and Clinton, 68, proved themselves the undisputed front-runners to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.
Now they are under pressure to show they can unify voters in their respective parties before the Nov. 8 election and, in Trump's case, avoid a potentially disastrous split in the Republican ranks.
U.S. networks projected Trump won seven states, with victories stretching into the Deep South and as far north as Massachusetts, adding to a sense of momentum he had built last month by winning three of the first four contests.
Clinton's victories in seven states were just as impressive but in many ways predictable, propelled by African-American voters in southern states like Arkansas, where she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, began their political careers.
Trump's main rivals, U.S. senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, said they were determined to remain in the race.
Cruz, 45, won Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, as well as the Alaska caucuses, bolstering his argument that he had the best chance of stopping the New York billionaire. Rubio, the Republican establishment's favorite, was projected the winner in Minnesota, his first victory in the party's nominating contests.
Clinton rival Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, also won his home state along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma but lost to her in Massachusetts, which he had hoped to win. The democratic socialist vowed to pursue the battle for the nomination in the 35 states yet to vote.