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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Tom McCarthy in New York

Clinton and Trump secure sweeping primary wins – as it happened

Interactive
Track the primary results live.

Summary

We’re going to wrap up our live coverage for the evening. Here’s a summary of where things stand:

  • Donald Trump won by giant margins in all five states at stake (visit our comprehensive results page here). His delegate collection totals were at the very top of best-case scenarios for his campaign.
  • Trump declared himself the “presumptive nominee” and called on Republican rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich to exit the race. Derailing Trump now would appear to require his defeat in Indiana, which votes next Tuesday.
  • Hillary Clinton won four of five states comfortably, dropping only Rhode Island to Bernie Sanders, and moving to the brink of the nomination.
  • Sanders released a statement saying he would stay in the race and mentioning the Democratic agenda – but omitting mention of winning the nomination.
  • Speaking in Indiana, Cruz declared the state “favorable terrain” and predicted a turnaround next week. Kasich said he would continue to make supporters proud.
  • But it was, once again, Trump’s night. He has now won 26 states, a majority, and crossed the 950 delegate mark on his way, he hopes, to 1,237.
  • Trump and Clinton turned on each other. Clinton’s attacks were not subtle, but they were subtler than Trump’s.
  • But she said “love trumps hate,” that the country should not “build walls” and “if playing the woman card means fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave, then deal me in.”
  • Trump said “If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card.”
  • Don’t miss Mary Pat Christie, the New Jersey governor’s wife, over Trump’s left shoulder as Trump talks about “the woman’s card.”
  • Trump said “she’s crooked,” “her husband signed Nafta,” she’ll be “horrible on economic development,” “she’s had her shot, and she also raised her hand when it came to Iraq,” and she failed in Benghazi and Libya.

Visit our comprehensive results page here:

Here are the latest delegate breakdowns – with incomplete results from tonight as yet:

Republicans
Democrats

A crowd of well-heeled staff, volunteers and supporters erupted in cheers when Donald Trump emerged in the marbled lobby of his eponymous tower on Fifth Avenue, writes the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino:

He was trailed by his sons, Donald Jr and Eric, and his wife, Melania, as well as Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who endorsed Trump earlier this year.

Trump opened his remarks by thanking his supporters, and in a twist, the media, which he noted had been treating him fairly for the “last two hours”.

“I consider myself the presumptive nominee”
“I consider myself the presumptive nominee” Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

“I consider myself the presumptive nominee,” Trump told reporters, then cast himself as the only Republican candidate that could unify the party.

He dismissed questions about his pugnacity and bombast being part of an act. “I am me,” he declared. He added later: “Why would I change? ... I may act differently, but my thought process is the same.”

Drudge, the conservative id in a fedora, sees Cruz at the exit:

What is Mary Pat Christie, the New Jersey governor’s wife, thinking, as Trump says that the only reason Clinton is clearing 5% in the polls is that she is a woman?

Updated

Sanders shifts talk to Democratic 'agenda'

Sanders releases a statement focusing on “the agenda of the Democratic party” – further reframing his roll in the nominating race, a process already under way this past weekend.

Updated

Trump: 'if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5%'

Trump says, as he has before but more forcefully, that the only thing Clinton has going for her is that she’s a woman:

I think the only card she has is the woman’s card. It’s the only thing she’s got going. If Hillary Clinton were a man, frankly, I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card. And what’s beautiful? Women do not like her.

Updated

Clinton projected to win Connecticut

That’s four out of five for Clinton, and a clean night for her, if not such a commanding night as Trump has had.

Trump is asked how he can run for president and testify in a class-action fraud case that moved forward today against his namesake Trump University.

Trump replies:

That’s a civil case, very simple, I’m gonna win that case very simply.

Then he’s asked how he can overcome his yawning unfavorability rating. He says rival candidates spent millions to destroy him “but now what’s happening is that most of these people who have been fighting me are done” and he asserts Clinton “will be much easier to beat.”

Trump says Cruz and Kasich are hurting the party “because they have no path, zero path to victory.”

Then Trump muses on the question of a contested convention. He argues that his popular vote total and delegates lead will be large enough that the party will not be able to nominate anyone else, even if he fails to nab a 1,237 delegate majority. He may well be right.

Trump says that Clinton is “a flawed candidate, and I think she’s going to be easy to beat.”

I think she’s going to be much easier to beat than most of the 16 people I competed with recently.

Then he says “the biggest threat to our country is nuclear.”

Trump continues:

Trump rattles off attacks on Clinton

Clinton rolls out a few lines of attack on Clinton. “Hillary’s, I call her Crooked Hillary, she’s crooked,” he says.

Trump says “her husband signed Nafta” – the North America free trade agreement, and “it was a disaster for this country. “Hillary will be horrible, absolutely horrible, on economic development. She knows nothing about jobs, apart from jobs for herself.”

He says she failed to “answer the 3am phone call” on Benghazi and Syria.

“She will not be a good president. She doesn’t have the strength, she doesn’t have the stamina, to deal with China or other things,” he says.

“One of the big problems our country has is problems with trade... the politicians cannot handle that problem.”

He continues:

“I’ll do far more for women than Hillary Clinton will ever do, including protecting our country...

and she’s had her shot, and she also raised her hand when it came to Iraq, and she shouldn’t have voted.

Updated

Trump: 'It's over. As far as I'm concerned it's over'

Trump: “It’s over. As far as I’m concerned it’s over.

So why would I change? If you have a football team. I’m not changing... I may act differently, but my thought process is the same.

Here’s what the RNC chairman was tweeting this morning:

But what’s for breakfast tomorrow?

Trump says that based on his crushing win in Pennsylvania, delegates “have a moral obligation” to vote for him in the first round of nominating balloting at the national convention. He’s at 58.4% in Pennsylvania with 57.7% reporting; Cruz has 21%.

“We’re gonna win on the first” ballot, Trump says.

In any case it appears that delegates who support Trump have done well in Pennsylvania tonight, and his strength across congressional districts would seem to bring him the support of many delegates who have said they will honor the district winners.

After sweeping all five of the states in play on Tuesday, Donald Trump came out swinging at his two remaining opponents. The wins keep alive his hopes of clinching the nomination on the first ballot at the GOP convention in July, but he knows two roadblocks remain: Ted Cruz and John Kasich, who have teamed up against him in recent days in an attempt to keep him from winning Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico.

“It shows ineffectiveness, it shows a failing campaign – it’s collusion,” Trump told his supporters. “When a boxer knocks out the other boxer you don’t have to wait around for a decision.”

Cruz remained undeterred by his own campaign’s math problem. That may be because Trump’s win in Pennsylvania may not be as shiny as it seems – the GOP sends 54 unplugged delegates to the convention who could still be swayed by Cruz. For him, magical thinking or no, Trump’s five-for-five run on Tuesday isn’t what it seems.

“The media is gonna say, ‘Donald Trump is the nominee,’” Cruz told supporters at a rally in Indiana. But “tonight this campaign moves back toward more favorable terrain.”

Trump: 'I consider myself the presumptive nominee'

Trump is riffing on places where he has won elections. “We’re going to have our country back. We’re gonna make America great again.

“I was so honored. This was to me our biggest night.”

He is going to take questions.

“I consider myself the presumptive nominee” he says. ... “we should heal the Republican party. And I’m a unifier, I unify people.”

Updated

Trump: 'we will beat Hillary so easily'

“We will beat Hillary so easily. I was not going to run, according to everybody and then I ran,” Trump says.

Then he signed election forms. Then he made a financial disclosure, which no one expected him to do either.

“Very shortly, we went to number one, and we’ve been there ever since. We’ve been there ever since.”

Updated

Trump is in a chatty mood, as opposed to an uproarious, chest-pounding, ball-spiking mood.

He’s rambling about how big his victories were:

When you crack 60, with three people, that’s very hard to do. When you crack 60 with two people, that’s called a massive landslide.

“We’ll be going to Indiana tomorrow afternoon” for “a long stay,” Trump says. He’ll be hanging out with former Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight, the dyspeptic state hero, he says.

I want to thank the media. The media’s really covered me very fair over the last two hours.

“We have millions more votes, millions more, than Cruz... Kasich now, I guess he was 1-and-41, now he is 1-and-46. Why is he here?”

Updated

Trump takes stage

Here he is. Trump steps to the lectern. New Jersey governor Chris Christie is standing behind Trump, and he thanks him. “We’ve had such incredible support throughout,” Trump says.

Resounding Trump victories

It appears that Trump has outperformed most every model of how the delegates were supposed to fall tonight (we should have updated delegate estimates by night’s end):

Here’s the argument the #NeverTrump movement – mainly Republicans and conservatives aligned against the GOP frontrunner – is making tonight: Indiana could “change the narrative of this race.”

Updated

Here’s footage of the protester at the Cruz event. It gets physical. “Everyone keep your hands off of him,” Cruz says:

Hillary Clinton is feeling the flow. Her wins in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware put her over the 2,000 mark for delegates, which has her looking to the general election – and past opponent Bernie Sanders.

“What a great night,” Clinton gleefully told a crowded and rowdy rally of supporters in Philadelphia. “We’re going to come back to Pennsylvania for the Democratic National Convention with the most votes and the most pledged delegates.”

We’re now in the math portion of this final exam, and her opponent has his calculator out too. Tonight Sanders won little ol’ Rhode Island, but now he knows his chance of winning with pledged delegates is nearly impossible. That’s why he’s making the case to sway the so-called super delegates into his camp. He points to polls showing him further ahead of Trump in a head-to-head contest than a Clinton-Trump mashup.

On Tuesday evening Sanders sent a signal to the party establishment that he’s the one with the broadest appeal across the political spectrum, noting that some 3 million independent voters were locked out of the New York contest that Clinton resoundingly won.

“The reason that we are doing so much better against Republican candidates is that we’re winning independent votes and some Republican votes as well, and that is a point that I hope the delegates to the Democratic convention fully understand,” Sanders told supporters at a rally in West Virginia (which didn’t vote tonight).

But midway through Clinton’s address she revealed she’s also doing general election math: she can’t reach the White House if Sanders’ army of progressive revolutionaries sit on the sidelines in November. “I applaud Senator Sanders and his supporters,” she said. “There’s much more that unites us than divides us.”

Trump to take stage in New York

Trump is about to tell us what he thinks of his crushing five-state sweep this evening.

Watch it live here:

Clinton’s traveling spokesman sees the same thing a former top Obama aide does: it’s now Clinton versus Trump:

Cruz looks forward to 'favorable terrain'

In a packed sweaty high school gym used to film the underdog sports movie Hoosiers, Ted Cruz tried to cast himself as a successor to the plucky Hickory Hoosiers, a small-town basketball team that won the Indiana state championship against all odds, writes Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs from Knightstown, Indiana:

Cruz went so far as not only to quote from the movie but re-enact a scene from it. He had his body man, Bruce Redden, stand on a ladder with a tape measure to demonstrate the basket was the same height in Indiana as it was in New York City. It was a reference to a scene where the underdog high school coach, played by Gene Hackman, inspired his team to victory on the eve of a game against a heavily favored opponent by showing the basket was the same height on every basketball court.

Knightstown, Indiana.
Knightstown, Indiana. Photograph: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters

However, Cruz faced an interruption from a vocal Trump supporter who later identified himself as “none of your damn business” to the Guardian.

The man shouted at Cruz, “you’re ineligible, you’re Canadian” a reference to the Texas senator’s birth in Alberta. When later asked if it might be rude for him to interrupt a Cruz event, the man wearing a Trump T-shirt said “That dude is coming to my city, and bothering my people. It’s rude for him to be here. He’s ineligible. He’s Canadian.”

He also expressed his rage about Cruz’s pact with rival John Kasich. “Furthermore and to wit, the man is colluding with Kasich to deny the frontrunner, Donald Trump.”

With that exception, the crowd cheered almost every utterance of Cruz’s, sharing his disdain for the mainstream media and enjoying his claim that Donald Trump would be Hillary Clinton’s running mate, since both are “New York liberals.”

Cruz quickly brushed over his losses in the five primaries tonight: “Tonight Donald Trump was expected to have a good night,” he said. Bu Cruz expressed confidence that in Indiana’s primary next week, the GOP primary would move “to more favorable terrain.”

Clinton wants future 'where love trumps hate'

That has the ring of a durable general election slogan. The crowd in Philadelphia really likes the line.

A big cheer line out of Clinton, attacking Trump:

The other day, Donald Trump accused me of playing the woman card. Well if playing the woman card means fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave, then deal me in!

Updated

The Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui is in Philadelphia with Clinton:

More on that Rhode Island Democratic result: with 49.3% reporting, Sanders holds a big 57-41 lead, based on strong performances across the (smallest-in-the-nation) state. Twenty-one delegates are at stake, to be awarded proportionally.

The victory is a thumb in the eye for the local Democratic establishment, which was all signed up for Clinton in 2016. Not the voters, it turns out.

Sanders salutes supporters in Huntington, West Virginia.
Sanders salutes supporters in Huntington, West Virginia. Photograph: Marcus Constantino/Reuters

Updated

Sanders takes Rhode Island

Bernie Sanders is the projected winner of the Rhode Island primary, according to AP, preventing a Clinton sweep.

Only Connecticut still to come.

Clinton is taking the stage in Philadelphia. You can watch live here:

Kasich on track for multiple second-place finishes

Ohio governor John Kasich “will continue making his supporters proud,” his campaign tweets. Which tonight would seem to mean a few distant second-place finishes.

Kasich is ahead of Cruz in Connecticut with 26% reporting – but the overwhelming victor is Trump, 60-25-12.

In Delaware with 90% reporting, it’s the same order, 61-20-16.

In Rhode Island with 36.9% reporting, it’s the same order, 66-22.5-10.

Kasich leaves the Penrose Diner in Philadelphia Monday.
Kasich leaves the Penrose Diner in Philadelphia Monday. Photograph: David Maialetti/AP

Clinton projected to win Pennsylvania

A good result for Clinton, in the biggest prize of the night: Pennsylvania has 189 Democratic delegates to give. They’re awarded proportionally, and the final margin matters, but the headline victory has a value all its own.

That’s three out of five for Clinton, with Rhode Island and Connecticut still out.

Bernie Sanders’ supporters are likely feeling berned right now, as Hillary Clinton has won three of today’s five primary contests. Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware voters seem to have put experience over progressive aspirations today.

Sanders needed big wins tonight to stay viable until the convention, and it looks like he’s only racked up more losses. But he’s not quitting. Instead, he’s making the pitch to super delegates to switch their support from her to him. Sounding more establishment by the day.

Donald Trump, nominee? He’s cleared some powerful symbolic hurdles, anyway.

Trump at the Time 100 Gala earlier Tuesday evening.
Trump at the Time 100 Gala earlier Tuesday evening. Photograph: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs brings us the saga of a Trump supporter who showed up at the Cruz rally in Indiana, to taunt Cruz as a colluding Canadian:

Our live election results page is a beehive of activity right now, as Donald Trump fills in all the precincts he won on the Republican side – and as close races unfold on the Democratic side.

In Connecticut, with 15.8% reporting, only a tenth of a point separate Sanders and Clinton, who spent significant time last week campaigning in the state.

Sanders appears to hold a lead in Rhode Island, the one state of the five where polls had detected a potential Sanders victory. With 6.1% of precincts reporting, Sanders is up 56.6-42.2.

Pennsylvania is developing more slowly, with only .3% reporting so far.

Watch all the results roll in here:

Updated

Clinton projected to win Delaware

That’s two for Clinton – with results in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Connecticut still out on the Democratic side.

Trump projected to win Rhode Island, Delaware

That’s a clean sweep for Trump, according to AP projections.

Here’s the Upshot:

Updated

In exit polling on the Democratic side, Ben Jacobs flags a dynamic in Maryland we haven’t seen much of nationally: more Democratic voters told exit pollsters they were inspired by Clinton than Sanders:

Pollsters also found typically strong support for Hillary Clinton among African Americans in Maryland...

...and support for Sanders among young voters:

The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino is at the scene in Trump Tower in Manhattan where the Republican victor is scheduled to give yet another celebratory speech, beginning in about 40 minutes.

Updated

The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs is delving into the trove of exit polling data released after the close of polls. With this data, news outlets are permitted to report whom people said they voted for.

In Pennsylvania, it appears, a whole lot of people said Trump, Trump, Trump:

Aide says Sanders will be 'upfront' about math

Sanders’ ongoing speech in Virginia does not betray a reconsideration on his part of a continued insistence that he has “a narrow path” to the nomination.

But in an interview with the New York Times published this afternoon, top Sanders strategist Tad Devine said that just such a “reassessment” would be under way if Hillary Clinton performed well tonight.

“If we are sitting here and there’s no sort of mathematical way to do it, we will be upfront about that,” Devine told the Times, continuing:

If we have a really good day, we are going to continue to talk about winning most of the pledged delegates because we will be on a path toward it. If we don’t get enough today to make it clear that we can do it by the end, it’s going to be hard to talk about it. That’s not going to be a credible path. Instead, we will talk about what we intend to do between now and the end and how we can get there.

We may decide we have to pick up some more delegates in some of these caucus states. Maybe we have to get some more people on the ground between now and the state conventions some place because we are not going to win as many as we thought we were going to win in primaries. But we have got to make up the difference elsewhere — that’s the reassessment.

Read the full piece here.

Here’s a live video stream of Sanders’ speech in West Virginia:

It seems Northeast Republicans love Donald Trump, or maybe they just hate Ted Cruz. The reality TV star swept the three of the five contests moments after polls closed, setting him up for a chance to wrap up the nomination before the establishment can derail him on the second ballot at the convention.

All eyes are now on the pact – some say suicide pact –between Cruz and Ohio Gov John Kasich to team up, trying to give the senator the upper hand in Indiana while ceding New Mexico and Oregon to the governor (who to date has only racked up a win in his home state of Ohio).

It’s telling that Cruz has already fled the animosity he’s faced in the East to the friendly confines of the Midwest. This evening, as voters were still deciding his fate in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware, he held a rally in Indiana where he hopes to net another big win like he did in Wisconsin earlier in the month. The Cruz campaign is dropping a cool $2.2m in the Hoosier State, while the Never Trump forces are promising $2m in ad buys to derail The Donald.

But the leader of the GOP pack beyond the horse race; he’s working on his presidential bona fides, skipping campaigning in upcoming primary states Wednesday in favor of giving a foreign policy speech in Washington DC that afternoon.

The media will surely cover it, but will military officials continue to laugh off his proposals on, say, torture, or on walls that reach to the heavens? Stay tuned. Or maybe give yourself a break and just watch playoff games tomorrow night.

Bernie Sanders is speaking in Huntington, West Virginia, which votes on 10 May.

He’s running through a recent version of his stump speech, underscoring how far his campaign has come in the last year.

“When we began this campaign the media said... the campaign is a fringe campaign not to be taken seriously. And in the middle of all of that we were taking on the most powerful political organization in America...

“We were about 3% in the national polls, 60 points behind secretary Clinton.

“Well, a lot has happened in the last year!”

Big cheers.

Pennsylvania nominally offers the biggest delegate prize of the night, with 71 pledged delegates to award.

But Trump’s apparently large victory in the state does not ensure him robust first-round support from delegates at the national conventions, thanks to the state’s complicated party rules.

Visit our interactive results page to see how Trump’s victory is breaking down regionally. (We’re still at 0% officially reporting.)

Trump projected winner in three states; Clinton in Maryland

Three immediate projections from AP, the second polls close: Trump wins in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Connecticut, while Clinton wins in Maryland.

And the polls aren’t really closed in Baltimore yet? Seems a bit messy.

More to come...

Updated

Polls in four states about to close

... in fewer than five minutes, now. Maryland is being kept open an hour later thanks to a successful appeal in the state’s race for a US senate seat.

Cruz says Clinton has tapped Trump as vice president

“Tonight this campaign moves back to Indiana,” Cruz says, “and Nebraska, and North Dakota, and Montana, and Washington, and California.”

Did he really say North Dakota, which will hold a democratic caucus, instead of South Dakota, which will hold a Republican primary? Not like Cruz to make such a mistake. Must’ve been the blog!

Cruz has an aide measure the height of a basketball hoop and says they’re 10 feet in Indiana just like in New York and “There’s nothing a Hoosier can’t do.” He’s speaking in the gym that hosted the team that created the legend captured in the movie.

Here’s a joke from Cruz:

“I have an announcement to make. A major announcement. Hillary Clinton has decided on her vice presidential nominee. Hillary has picked Donald Trump.”

Here’s a Cruz live video stream:

Updated

Cruz takes stage in Indiana

Ben Jacobs is with Ted Cruz in Indiana, which does not vote until next Tuesday but which has taken center stage in the Republican race owing to the 30 delegates it will award outright to the statewide victor.

Cruz already has begun talking, Ben reports:

Maryland returns to be delayed

Maryland returns won’t be released until 9pm ET after a court hearing in Baltimore determined that four polling places in Baltimore City – John Eager Howard Elementary, Beth Am Synagogue, Oliver Multi-Purpose Center and Pimlico Elementary School – didn’t open on time, writes Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs:

Polling hours at all four locations will be extended by an hour.

The case was brought by the campaign of Democratic Senate hopeful Representative Donna Edwards, who is facing an uphill battle against Representative Chris Van Hollen for Maryland’s open Senate seat. All four precincts in question are in majority African American areas of Baltimore City.
Disclosure: Ben Jacobs is a lifelong congregant at Beth Am Synagogue.

The view from the polls

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Eduardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP/Getty Images
New Alexandria, Pennsylvania.
New Alexandria, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Keith Srakocic/AP
Suitland, Maryland.
Suitland, Maryland. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Dominick Reuter/Reuters

The exit poll temptation

There are no exit polls in Rhode Island and Delaware tonight – only in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Connecticut.

Exit polls are conducted by an independent contractor who hires interviewers to work outside polling stations throughout the day to feed information they collect about voters’ opinions and demographics to a consortium of news outlets.

While exit polls can shed light on how various sectors of the electorate are turning out, they can be misleading if they do not achieve representative samples or if something else goes wrong.

And so we link to roundups of exit polling data with the usual caveat that the data may not pertain to actual outcomes.

But this is interesting, isn’t it: big majorities of Republican voters in all three states were measured as agreeing with Donald Trump –and disagreeing with Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus – that a candidate with a plurality of votes going into the Cleveland convention, if not a majority of delegates, should get the nomination.

Here’s Steve Kornacki of MSNBC, whose Twitter feed contains lots of similar good stuff:

30 minutes till polls close

With what appear to be some pretty chunky leads for the frontrunners tonight, we may see results in some states, and projections of winners, follow fast on the heels of polling station closures at 8pm ET.

So scramble to the window now, as the action on the track is set to begin.

Pennsylvania's mazelike delegate rules

Sometimes election rules are simple. Sometimes they are complicated. And sometimes, they are the rules of the Pennsylvania Republican primary, writes Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs:

Only 17 of the Keystone State’s 71 delegates are determined by a vote for a presidential candidate on Tuesday night. The other 54 delegates are elected individually on the ballot. Voters in each congressional district elect three delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. These delegates are formally uncommitted. If they support a candidate, that name does not appear on the ballot next time.

This can reduce voting to a guessing game. Voters have to rely on whether they know the names of any of the delegates or have to bring in slate cards distributed by individual campaigns so that they know for sure. It also makes things treacherous for candidates. They have no mechanism to formally bind delegates to them on the first ballot. Even if a delegate swears a blood oath to vote for Donald Trump on the first ballot in Cleveland, RNC rules still leave from free to change their mind at the last minute and vote for Ted Cruz.

The result is that even if Trump sweeps to a statewide victory it is entirely possible he may not end up with a majority of Pennsylvania’s delegates. But don’t cry too hard for him. Trump won all of South Carolina’s delegates on February 20 with less than a third of the state’s votes.

The candidates have distributed cards with lists of friendly delegates to voters:

View from the polls / Martin O'Malley edition

Baynard Woods was interviewing voters in Baltimore – when whom should he run into but former Maryland governor and presidential candidate Martin O’Malley:

Martin O’Malley
Martin O’Malley Photograph: Guardian

Name: Martin O’Malley, 53

Occupation: politician

Voting for: won’t say

My most important issue is to save lives in the city, for about 11 years we led the country in reducing violent crime. We’ve gotten off of that path and we need to remember the things that actually work and start doing them again.

Baynard also spoke with a retiree supporting Hillary Clinton – and many other voters whose stories you can read in our earlier live blog coverage here.

Brenda McDougal
Brenda McDougal Photograph: Guardian

Name: Brenda McDougal, 63

Occupation: retired

Voting for: Hillary Clinton

What your feet and hands doing. Like at my church, a lady showed up at our church service and my pastor said we ain’t seen her all year but all of a sudden here you come when it’s time to vote...My grandson is 23, no 22, and ... and we was talking about voting and he said he was going to vote for Bernie Sanders and tried to get me to vote for Bernie Sanders, he said ‘Grandma, I want you to watch this video,’ and he showed a picture of Bernie Sanders in a circle of all black rap artists. I said ‘What do you think he’s going to say in front of them?’ We have to think past that, have to look at their past records, what have they been doing, have you been there have you shown up. Don’t just show up at voting time. I look at that stuff.

The Guardian’s Ciara McCarthy, meanwhile, interviewed voters in Philadelphia – a fair selection of whom you can find here. She spoke with a retiree who supported Sanders:

James Stewart
James Stewart Photograph: Guardian

Name: James Stewart, 58

Occupation: retired

Voted for: Bernie Sanders

James Stewart, a retired Philadelphia resident, said he voted for Bernie Sanders in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary because he believed Sanders was most willing to address police brutality.

“Police brutality and is the most important issue to me. I’m just saying, police are killing a lot of black people,” Stewart said. “We need somebody to police the police. They’re killing us for no reason. It seems like the Ku Klux Klan is in blue uniforms now. I hate to say that, but that’s what it seems like.”

In February, Sanders told the Guardian that police departments should be obligated to report all deaths by law enforcement officers. Local law enforcement agencies are not currently required to submit data on fatalities by police to the FBI, although officials said in 2015 the FBI would overhaul its system.

Visit our comprehensive results page

As the night develops, you’ll want to visit our interactive results page, which posts results as precincts report them.

The page features the candidates riding scissors lifts and painting in counties tied to congressional districts they’ve made a move to capture. We don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Updated

Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the presidential primaries tonight in five states that could propel the frontrunners along towards Victory Harbor – or slacken their sails with another six weeks of voting to go.

Republican leader Donald Trump is expected, if the polling’s any good, to breeze through all five states tonight: Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton looks almost as good, but with a question mark in Rhode Island, where a poll this month found her rival, Bernie Sanders, ahead by four points.

Polls everywhere close at 8pm ET. We’re expecting the first telltale tidbits of exit polling shortly.

After Clinton’s 16-point win in New York a week ago, Sanders, who trails her by 275 pledged delegates, began describing his path to the nomination as “narrow”. If Clinton wins big tonight, he may need to go looking for an even skinnier adjective.

The picture on the Republican side is, as usual, more complex. Trump’s path to the 1,237-delegate majority he needs will remain difficult, even with big wins tonight, which are baked into most models, the east being friendly territory for him.

But resounding wins this evening could perhaps sway voters in Indiana, which will award a juicy 30 delegates to the statewide winner next week, toward Trump and away from rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Is there such a thing as primary momentum? Ask Sanders after Michigan or Cruz after Wisconsin.

Of particular interest will be the Republican race in Pennsylvania, which will award 71 delegates – more than any other state tonight – on a basis that can only be described as YOLO. Voters in Pennsylvania must vote for delegates by name, with no indication on the ballot of which presidential candidate a delegate is likely to support. And so the campaigns have undertaken to educate voters on which delegates support which candidates. But the delegates can change their minds. The Keystone state will “award” 54 delegates this way, with an additional 17 simply falling to the statewide winner.

Whatever the case, it pays to know the state of the delegate race. Here’s how the Democrats currently stack up:

Democrats

And here’s the Republican side:

Republicans

How would you describe the stakes tonight? How do you expect the candidates to perform? Thank you for reading – and as always, pitch in in the comments!

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