Peter Schorsch
The latest on campaign 2016 as Michigan, Mississippi, Idaho and Hawaii vote for nominees:
2:36 a.m. – Donald Trump has won the Republican presidential caucuses in Hawaii, adding to his victories earlier Tuesday in Michigan and Mississippi.
Cruz edged out Kasich in Michigan, where the Ohio governor had spent much of the past week campaigning.
And Rubio posted two third-place and two fourth-place finishes on a disappointing night for the Florida senator.
12:14 a.m. – Cruz has won the Republican presidential primary in Idaho, adding a seventh state win to his tally in the 2016 White House race.
He finished ahead of GOP front-runner Trump, who earlier Tuesday won the day’s two biggest prizes — the primary elections in Mississippi and Michigan.
11:52 p.m. – Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says he’s “grateful to the people of Michigan for defying the pundits and pollsters” and delivering him a win in the state’s Democratic presidential primary.
In a statement issued after Sanders’ win over Hillary Clinton, he says, “We came from 30 points down in Michigan and we’re seeing the same kind of come-from-behind momentum all across America.”
Sanders adds that the results “show that we are a national campaign. We already have won in the Midwest, New England and the Great Plains and as more people get to know more about who we are and what our views are, we’re going to do very well.”
11:31 p.m. – Sanders has won the Democratic presidential primary in Michigan, claiming victory over Clinton in an industrial Midwest state where voters expressed concerns about trade and jobs.
But despite his close win, he won’t see any real gains in delegates for the night. And Clinton has now earned more than half of the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.
With 130 Michigan delegates at stake, Sanders will win at least 63 and Clinton at least 52. His gains will be canceled out by Clinton’s earlier win in Mississippi. She already entered the night with a 196-delegate lead over Sanders based on primaries and caucuses alone.
Democrats award delegates in proportion to the vote, so Clinton was able to add on a good chunk of delegates even after losing Michigan.
Including superdelegates, her lead becomes even bigger — at least 1,214 to Sanders’ 566.
Still, Sanders can claim a small streak of wins going into a pivotal batch of delegate-rich contests next week.
Since Super Tuesday, Sanders has now won four of the last six states holding contests. Next week, Democratic voters head to the polls in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Florida. In all, 691 delegates will be at stake.
11:23 p.m. – Elections officials in Detroit say all is back to normal after a computer glitch caused a temporary issue with reporting results in the state’s presidential primary election.
City elections chief Daniel Baxter says Detroit for a short time Tuesday night reported to country officials a single number of votes for each candidate, a combination of both absentee ballots and those cast in person. The county sought a separate tally for each kind of vote.
Baxter says the process of starting the vote count over to report absentee votes and in-person votes separately took about 15 minutes, and did not affect the total votes cast for any candidate.
10:56 p.m. – The Democratic race in Michigan is too close to call, but the candidates are already trying to make the most out of whatever the outcome may be.
Sanders stepped in front of reporters late Tuesday night in Miami to argue the best is yet to come for his campaign. Sanders says he’ll do well on the West Coast, and points also to next week’s votes in Ohio and Illinois.
He says, “In poll after poll, state after state, what we have done is create the kind of momentum that we need to win.”
Meanwhile, Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri says her campaign remains “confident she is going to be the nominee.”
Speaking to reporters in Cleveland, Palmieri says “our strategy for getting the nomination is built around accruing more delegates. We will come out on top tonight on delegates.”
10:25 p.m. – Trump says he thinks a negative ad that features clip after bleeped-out clip of him swearing publically is actually going to help him with voters.
Trump said Tuesday he was a little concerned by the ad from the American Future Fund Political Action until he saw it.
He said he thinks that “it’s better than any ad I’ve ever taken for myself.”
Trump said he “can be more presidential than anybody” but that right now he’s focused on beating his rivals.
He adds that, “people are sick and tired of being politically correct.”
Trump says that in some of the instances shows in the ad he was joking. In others, he says he was demonstrating “a certain toughness that we need in our country.”
He adds that if he had a choice between taking the ad down and letting it run, he’d say, “let it run.”
10:15 p.m. – Kasich says he’s “very pleased” with the results in Michigan’s primary, despite the race for second remaining too close to call between Kasich and Ted Cruz.
Speaking to an energized crowd Tuesday, Kasich said voters are beginning to hear and reward his positive campaign as the race turns to his home state of Ohio.
He’s telling the crowd he got on his hands and knees and “almost kissed the ground” when his plane landed in Cleveland for an event Tuesday afternoon.
Kasich has yet to win a state, but has taken second place in Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. Still, his campaign is continuing on with the belief that the primary calendar will become more favorable as more Midwestern and northern states begin voting.
Of his campaign, he says, “we struggled and worked in obscurity for a very long time.”
10:10 p.m. – Clinton did not mention the primary contests in Michigan or Mississippi during a rally in Cleveland Tuesday night, instead looking ahead.
Saying she expects a “busy week” in Ohio, which holds its crucial winner-take-all primary on March 15, Clinton said Tuesday that she was “excited to have the campaign building across this state.”
Clinton said she was proud of the campaigns she and Bernie Sanders were running and focused her criticism instead on the Republicans.
“America is great,” she told a cheering crowd, using GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s campaign mantra. She reiterated her call to “make it whole.”
“We are better than what we are being offered by the Republicans,” she said.
9:55 p.m. – Trump campaign contain wording copied exactly from others sources with no attribution.
The Republican presidential front-runner has copied wording for Arkansas, Idaho, Ohio, Colorado, Michigan sites all regarding voter information from outside sources.
In Idaho, the Trump campaign used a 2012 Boise State Public Radio story containing information on where and how to vote. It also cited judicial races no longer taking place and quotes a former Idaho Republican Party official.
Peter Morrill, the radio station’s interim general manager, says no one from the Trump campaign requested permission to use the story.
Meanwhile, in states like Michigan and Arkansas, the same voter information on Trump’s state website is posted on the state’s Secretary of State website.
9:15 p.m. – Trump has won the Republican presidential primary in Michigan, edging out rivals to post his 14th state victory of the 2016 White House race.
It’s the second victory for Trump in Tuesday’s nomination contests. The billionaire businessman also won Mississippi’s Republican primary earlier Tuesday.
Idaho and Hawaii will also vote late Tuesday.
Heading into Tuesday’s contests, Trump led the Republican field with 384 delegates, followed by Ted Cruz with 300, Marco Rubio with 151 and John Kasich with 37. Winning the GOP nomination requires 1,237 delegates.
8:00 p.m. – Hillary Clinton has won the Democratic presidential primary in Mississippi, riding a continuing wave of support from black voters in Southern states to claim her latest victory over Bernie Sanders. The former secretary of state will proportionally be awarded a share of the state’s 36 delegates. Clinton had already earned 1,134 delegates in previous contests, versus 502 that have gone to Sanders.
7:00 p.m. – Ted Cruz is going after Donald Trump‘s recent move of asking rally attendees to pledge their allegiance to him. Cruz told a crowd of 1,000 at a Kannapolis, North Carolina church on Tuesday that the move strikes him as “profoundly wrong” and is something “kings and queens demand” of their subjects.
Trump has recently begun kicking off his rallies by asking thousands of attendees to raise a hand and pledge to support him in upcoming elections, including at a rally Monday afternoon in Concord, North Carolina.
“I’m not here asking any of you to pledge your support of me,” Cruz said, to thunderous applause and cheers. “I’m pledging my support of you.”
5:50 p.m. – “I have no idea,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday when asked why he thought no Senate Republicans have endorsed Cruz.
“It’s a circus, and I’m not part of that circus.”
Asked if he thought he could work with a President Cruz, Reid said he wouldn’t predict how the GOP primaries will end up and added, “It’s going to be a nasty affair.”
Sens. John Thune or John Cornyn had said Cruz would change if elected president.
No. 3 Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said, “That’s a great slogan. Maybe he’ll change.”
“Doesn’t that say a lot,” Schumer said of Cruz’s lack of any Senate endorsements. He said “it says something about what people think he’ll be as president.”
5:35 p.m. – Democratic primary voters in Michigan overwhelmingly think the government needs to do more to protect the safety of public water supplies.
Early results of the exit poll conducted for the Associated Press and television networks for Edison Research show that more than 8 in 10 Democrats voting in the state Tuesday think government regulations need to be made stronger to ensure a safe water supply, while just 1 in 10 think current regulations go far enough.
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both drawn attention to the issue leading up to Tuesday’s primary, including at Saturday night’s debate in Flint, Michigan.
5:25 p.m. – Most voters in Michigan and Mississippi, regardless of party, are worried about the direction of the country’s economy, and many consider trade to be a negative influence on American jobs.
According to early results of exit polls conducted by Edison Research for the Associated Press and television networks Tuesday, at least 8 in 10 voters in each primary say they are very or somewhat worried about where the American economy is headed.
More than half of Democratic and Republican voters in Michigan, along with Republicans in Mississippi, say trade with other countries takes jobs. In Mississippi, Democratic primary voters are more closely divided on the subject, with 4 in 10 saying it takes away jobs and nearly as many thinking it has a positive impact.
At least 8 in 10 Democratic voters in both states see the country’s economic system as benefiting the wealthy.
3:25 p.m. – The possibility that Ted Cruz might be in the White House next year has led to questions on Capitol Hill about whether he’d be able to work with his former colleagues in the Senate.
Cruz earned the wrath of his own party — Sen. John McCain of Arizona once called him a “wacko bird” — after an effort to thwart Obama’s health care law led to a 16-day, partial government shutdown in 2013.
Cruz later urged senators to end government funding for Planned Parenthood, a move that could have led to a second shutdown.
South Dakota Sen. John Thune suggested Tuesday a President Cruz would be very different than a Sen. Cruz. Whoever the next president is, Thune said, that person will have to forge a relationship with Congress.
“When you’re one of 100 up here, you can throw some grenades and do some things that you can’t do when you’re president of the United States,” Thune said.
