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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Tom McCarthy and Scott Bixby

Sanders and Cruz beat Clinton and Trump in Wisconsin – as it happened

Interactive
Wisconsin results tracker.

Summary

We’re going to wrap up our live blog coverage of the Wiconsin primaries. Here’s what happened:

  • Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Bernie Sanders came away with big victories in the Badger State, as anticipated.
  • Cruz appeared to have won at least 36 of the 42 Republican delegates at stake and had a chance, as of this writing, of shutting Donald Trump out entirely in Wisconsin.
  • The result appeared to bring the Republican race one step closer to a contested convention scenario, in which no one candidate goes in with a majority of delegates.
  • Trump released a sour-grapes non-concession statement accusing Cruz of illegally coordinating with outside groups.
  • “Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet – he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr Trump,” the statement said.
  • Hillary Clinton tweeted her congratulations to Sanders and asked supporters to look “forward!”
  • Sanders gave a victory speech in Wyoming, where Democrats vote Saturday. He proclaimed momentum and projected victory.
  • The setbacks for Clinton and Trump in Wisconsin could be much more than reversed, in terms of delegates, with wins in New York, which votes on 19 April.
  • Visit our comprehensive delegates tracker here, and find a district-by-district interactive map of the Wisconsin results here.

Updated

The Cruz camp has responded to Trump’s sour grapes “Trojan horse” charge.

Clinton, no Trump when it comes to cable, has a relatively rare morning TV appearance planned for tomorrow.

Cook Political report editor Dave Wasserman sees Trump with a chance at picking off one or two Wisconsin districts – for maybe six delegates. But the results are still out.

On the Democratic side, Sanders holds about a 12-point lead with 58% of the vote in (you can visit our comprehensive results page here). A lead of that size would see Sanders gain about 10 delegates on Clinton, out of 86 total at stake in Wisconsin.

Our comprehensive delegates tracker is here.

“I know a little bit about New York because I spent the first 18 years of my life in Brooklyn, New York,” Sanders says. He says he has a secret for the crowd – one they should not let slip because “secretary Clinton is getting nervous.”

Here’s the secret:

I believe we’ve got an excellent chance to win New York and a lot of delegates in that state.

Hillary Clinton just had salt poured in her election night wounds. Both of the winners of Wisconsin’s primary used their victory speeches to lash out at the Democratic frontrunner.

Flanked by his wife and controversial Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, Ted Cruz started his victory speech with “Hillary, here we come”. He never mentioned Bernie Sanders by name.

For his part, Sanders seems unaware the GOP may be headed towards a contested convention or that Cruz may be his eventual rival. He highlighted polls that he says show he’s a better match up against Donald Trump than Clinton is.

Sanders’ victory speech was delivered in Wyoming, where he reminded the crowd to come out for Saturday’s caucuses before he stopped to briefly thank today’s Wisconsin voters.

Trump: 'party bosses attempting to steal the nomination'

The Washington Post has a Trump camp statement. It does not offer Ted Cruz congratulations on his resounding win. It accuses Cruz of rigging the election and calls him a “puppet”:

Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet – he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr Trump.

Updated

It is really something to re-view Sanders’ campaign announcement last 30 April. The message hasn’t changed much. The crowds have.

Tonight’s crowd in Laramie, Wyoming.
Tonight’s crowd in Laramie, Wyoming. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP

Sanders proclaims momentum. The media consigned him to the fringe 18 months ago, he says. He was down 60-70 points. He is now even with Clinton in some national polls.

“That’s momentum.”

He thanks Wisconsinites, makes a point about his polling well against Trump and falls into his stump speech.

“There is nothing that we cannot accomplish” if people vote in large numbers, Sanders says.

Sanders speaking in Wyoming

Sanders has joined a crowd of ecstatic supporters in Wyoming, which votes Saturday (Democrats at least).

“I was told that there were about 5,000 people who participated in the last Wyoming caucus,” he says. “It looks like all of them are here tonight. Thank you!”

“We won in Wisconsin!”

Cheers cheers.

Updated

Clinton tweets her congratulations:

Here’s the happy guy, arriving at his rally tonight in Milwaukee.
Here’s the happy guy, arriving at his rally tonight in Milwaukee. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters

Cruz concludes with this:

Hillary, get ready. Here we come.

His supporters are excited at the line. For good measure he tweets it:

Updated

Strong women can accomplish anything in the United States of America.

– Texas senator Ted Cruz

The Clinton campaign contributes a statement now to the stack, accusing the Sanders camp of trying to override the will of voters:

“It seems the Sanders campaign is finally seeing the writing on the wall: Hillary has won more votes AND more pledged delegates in this election – her lead in both is nearly insurmountable,” reads a statement by campaign manager Robby Mook:

So this morning, Bernie’s campaign manager claimed the convention could be an “open convention,” and declared they’re going to try and flip delegates’ votes, overturning the will of the voters.

Your vote is your voice, and the Sanders campaign shouldn’t be trying to circumvent the process – or the nearly 9 million (and counting) people who have made their voice heard for Hillary in this election.

A subdued Clinton watch party

It was a subdued crowd that gathered at La Perla (no, not *that* La Perla – a Mexican restaurant of the same name) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for Mayor Tom Barrett’s election watch party for Hillary Clinton supporters.

People chatted in small groups and stared at their phones, clustered around one of two televisions turned to the election results; the station, WISN, also had a camera at the party doing live stand-ups, so one could occasionally watch a head swivel from staring at the person being interviewed to the interview airing on television.

People were sipping sickly-sweet pre-made margaritas out of plastic glasses and watching Ted Cruz’s lips move on a muted television while Adolecentes Orquestra’s “Persona Ideal” blared on the sound system when the race was called for Sanders on the television’s crawl and on their phones. A few grimaces, and the Clinton supporters turned back to the television and their conversations, as the mostly-local reporters got to work.

As Cruz continues to speak, the Republican national committee releases a statement ripping Clinton for losing six of the last seven state contests to “a 74-year-old socialist”:

Losing six of the last seven states at this stage of the race once again highlights the fact Hillary Clinton is a weak candidate running a campaign with no clear message. For months we heard from the Clinton camp that they’d have the nomination wrapped up by March, but as we head into April she’s still struggling to put away a 74 year-old socialist who never before sought office as a Democrat.

Cruz: 'Wisconsin has lit a candle'

“We are not here to curse the darkness but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness.

“Tonight, Wisconsin has lit a candle guiding the way forward.”

“Tonight is about humility and tonight is about hope.”

Cruz says he’ll bring jobs back to the USA by “repealing Obamacare, reigning in the federal regulators that are killing small businesses, passing a flat tax and abolishing the IRS.

“We will unleash incredible economic growth, our border will finally be made secure and sanctuary cities will end.”

Updated

Cruz: 'We will beat Hillary Clinton'

Cruz: “Just how significant is tonight? Well just today, our campaign has raised over $2m. People all over the country going to tedcruz.org, tedcruz.org, tedcruz.org.

Cruz says he probably gained over 100 delegates on Trump in the last three weeks. He says he can get to 1,237, which defies the math.

We will win a majority of the delegates, and together we will beat Hillary Clinton in November. Tonight was a bad night for Hillary Clinton. It was a bad night for her in the Democratic primary and it was an even worse night for her in the Republican primary.

Updated

Cruz: result 'a turning point'

Cruz addresses supporters, blessing the great state of Wisconsin and thanking governor Scott Walker.

He calls the result a “turning point, a rallying cry.”

“The national political terrain began to change two weeks ago” with a big win in Utah, Cruz says.

“Then just three days ago in Colorado, two congressional districts voted... we won all six” delegates.

Cruz says that North Dakota delegates who specified support for a presidential candidate a couple days ago went 18-1 for Cruz over Trump.

Updated

Now that the statewide winners have been settled, what important questions are left unanswered?

Here are two: can Donald Trump capture a single congressional district, thereby winning three delegates – or might he win a couple?

and

Will the seven-point lead Bernie Sanders is currently sitting on hold up?

Bernie Sanders remains on a roll, at least in predominantly white and working class states. With his projected Wisconsin win over Hillary Clinton tonight, he’s now taken six for seven of the last states to weigh in on who will be the Democratic standard bearer in November.

Team Clinton is playing it cool though, highlighting that Sanders’s path to the nomination would require him to win each of the remaining states that have massive numbers of delegates at stake – New York, Pennsylvania, California and New Jersey – by at least 60%, which Clinton’s aides believe is nearly impossible.

Sanders’s Wisconsin win makes next week’s Democratic debate all the more important to his campaign before New York voters cast their ballots on 19 April.

Sanders projected to win Wisconsin

Bernie Sanders is the projected winner of the Wisconsin Democratic primary, according to AP.

Are we on the way to an open Republican convention on 18-21 July? Look out Cleveland...

By giving Ted Cruz another key victory, Wisconsin conservatives may have dealt a severe blow to Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations, but Cruz still hasn’t gained a clear path to victory.

The magic number to clinch the Republican nomination is 1,237 delegates and, barring a miracle or a catastrophe, none of the remaining three GOP candidates have a good path to solidifying that number. But the #NeverTrump movement seems to be coalescing around Cruz, even though he’s loathed by the Republican establishment in Washington.

The establishment choice, Ohio governor John Kasich, keeps racking up losses, but he keeps telling his supporters that he’s a winner at heart – and that he can dislodge his opponents at what now seems likely to be a contested convention. That’s as uncertain as any other possibility.

Sanders seizes on reports of victory

Bernie Sanders has sent an email declaring victory in Wisconsin, apparently based on the strength of early returns and the decision of at least one network to call it for him.

“Sisters and Brothers,” the email begins:

Moments ago the news networks called another state for our political revolution, and it’s a big one: Wisconsin.

The corporate media and political establishment keep counting us out, but we keep winning states and doing so by large margins. If we can keep this up, we’re going to shock them all and win this nomination.

The statement declares momentum and projects victory:

Tonight kicked off the most important three week stretch of the campaign, and we did it with another overwhelming victory. If we can keep our momentum going through the states that vote and caucus over the next three weeks, we’re going to win this election.

The margin of victory is crucial on the Democratic side, which awards delegates proportionally. With only 7% of results in, Sanders sits on a solid lead.

Updated

Cruz projected winner of Wisconsin

Ted Cruz is the Republican victor in Wisconsin, AP projects.

Updated

Cruz cruises in crucial Waukesha

Early returns in Waukesha County, a deep-red jurisdiction in the heart of suburban Milwaukee, show Ted Cruz winning in a landslide, writes Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs:

The Texas senator has nearly 60% of the vote in an area which has long been the Republican base in the Badger State. In the racially polarized Milwaukee area, statewide Republicans have long relied on running up the score in Waukesha to win general elections. It seems among these suburban voters, Cruz is the favorite.

And now for exit polling results – to be consumed with a grain of salt – on the Democratic side.

Sanders performs well with young voters:

While Clinton appears to win over African Americans by nearly as high a margin:

Sanders wins men about 3-2, while women vote at about an even split:

And Sanders wins voters who say a potential Wisconsin terror attack is low on their list of fears:

Ben Jacobs has wrapped a jungle vine around his waist and dived into the treacherous depths of a big new pool of exit polling data pertaining to Republican voters in the Wisconsin primary.

Ben sees Cruz, unusually, edging Trump with less-educated voters:

Appears to be a high proportion of self-identified “conservatives” among Republican voters:

And not much bother about “build a wall,” apparently:

There’s a lot more where that came from here.

Here’s one last story of a tangle by a Wisconsin voter with the state’s difficult new voter ID laws, courtesy of Guardian reporter in the field Megan Carpentier:

“I expected this to happen in Waukesha County”, said Ben Krause-Decorah, 22, of his experience trying to cast a ballot using a legal tribal ID as allowed under Wisconsin’s new strictest-in-the-nation voter identification law. “I didn’t realize that it was a hugely red county when I moved here, but now I see it all the time.”

Krause-Decorah is an enrolled member of the federally- and state-recognized Ho-Chunk Native American tribe and, as part of his job, he works with many other tribe members who live in the state. “There’s tons of people in my tribe who don’t have a state-issued ID”, he said, including his own sister. “Lots of people don’t have driver’s licenses. A tribal ID is free, it’s easy to get, it’s supposed to be valid.”

And when Krause-Decorah showed up to his polling station in Ward 19 in Waukesha County to update his address and cast his ballot, he was hearted to see on a sign displayed in the foyer that his tribal ID was going to be accepted.

But when he stepped into the side room to update his address as part of Wisconsin’s re-registration process, he was shocked to see that tribal IDs were not on the list next to the voting officials dealing with registrations. “Is this a real ID?” the woman asked him.

They debated its validity for a few moments, he said. “The words she used – ‘It’s really better for everyone if you just use a driver’s license’ – were like an ultimatum or a threat,” he said.

Reluctantly, he pulled out his driver’s license to complete the registration process, and then got in the line to cast his ballot.
But in that line, again, the poll worker questioned the validity of his tribal ID, despite its being one of a very small number of acceptable forms of identification. She, too, demanded his driver’s license and questioned loudly whether he was allowed to present his tribal ID.

“My sister’s an introvert,” he said. “Lots of people aren’t going to want to go through the hassle and humiliation of this, especially if they don’t have driver’s licenses.”

First Wisconsin result in minutes

Here it is, almost 9pm ET. We would direct your attention northward, to our Wisconsin results interactive.

May the best candidate win!

Updated

Two weeks before New York, the Donald Trump campaign plans to bring aboard former New York Representative John Sweeney, who will “helping out on legal work,” the New York Times reports.

Who? Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs has you covered:

How’d this hire come about? The fit was just right?

Take this quiz: which Donald Trump surrogate are you?

Updated

Kasich camp: 'contest is wide open'

John Weaver, chief strategist for trailing Republican hopeful John Kasich, pre-buts an anticipated third-place finish for the Ohio governor tonight. Kasich has won only his home state.

“The nomination contest is now wide open,” Weaver said in an email to supporters:

This week will be remembered as the one in which Ted Cruz and Donald Trump both effectively admitted they will not reach the GOP Convention with enough bound delegates to be the nominee.

Rather than admit their own electoral and political shortcomings, they are blaming John Kasich, the only Republican who can defeat Hillary Clinton in November.\

Smiling in New York on Monday.
Smiling in New York on Monday. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The email includes a section titled “No One Will Reach 1237,” and concludes with a roundup of polls showing Kasich as the only current Republican presidential candidate ahead of Hillary Clinton in a general election.

(h/t: @bencjacobs)

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Follow the Minute for the latest election headlines. Photograph: Guardian

First Wisconsin results in at 9pm ET

For those of you just joining us, welcome to our live coverage of tonight’s Wisconsin primary. Polls close at 9pm ET.

Thoughtful models show that a poor performance tonight for Donald Trump could make it very difficult for him to win the Republican nomination outright, before the July convention. But even a very strong showing by Ted Cruz would not alter the difficulties facing his would-be climb to 1,237 delegates.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders led by five or so points in polling averages, but he did not seem on the verge of a big catchup night in the delegates race that would allow him to overtake Hillary Clinton.

Our comprehensive results page is here, and a thumbnail version will live atop the blog throughout the night. Thanks for reading and, as always, please join us in the comments!

Updated

We’re within 45 minutes of the first Wisconsin results coming in.

It’s time to bookmark our live, district-by-district election results page. It features animated candidates riding scissors lifts to victoriously paintbrush districts as they steal the lead:

A non-animated version will live atop the blog all night – enjoy!

GOP senator urges hearings on Obama's supreme court pick

One of the few Republican senators to meet with Barack Obama’s supreme court nominee said she was now “more convinced than ever” that the US Senate should hold hearings on judge Merrick Garland, writes Guardian politics reporter Sabrina Siddiqui:

Maine senator Susan Collins met with Garland on Tuesday and lavished praise on Obama’s pick to replace the late justice Antonin Scalia.

“I found judge Garland to be well-informed, thoughtful, impressive, extraordinarily bright and with a sensitivity that I look for [regarding the] appropriate roles that the constitution assigns to the three branches,” Collins told reporters following their sit-down.

“The meeting left me more convinced than ever that the process should proceed. The next step, in my view, should be public hearings.”

Collins and Garland.
Collins and Garland. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Collins’ comments came despite vows from Senate Republican leaders to hold firm against considering the nomination, a position that took hold even before Obama chose Garland, the chief judge of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, as his nominee.

Read the full piece here:

In Snapchat election, it's Sanders by a nose

Bernie Sanders is winning the Snapchat election – at least on the follower count, writes the Guardian’s Amber Jamieson:

“We do have the largest – and I’ve heard by far – the largest one,” said Hector Sigala, a digital media director on the Sanders campaign.

Snapchat doesn’t offer its data publicly, but didn’t dispute claims that Sanders has the most people watching. One hundred million people use Snapchat daily, 86% of whom are under 35. Twice as many 18-24-year-olds watched the first GOP debate on Snapchat as opposed to TV. For candidates, it’s a critical platform.

Bernie: the kids love him.
Bernie: the kids love him. Photograph: Paul Sancya/AP

You could call 2016 the “first Snapchat election”. In the early days of the campaign race, the Republicans were very active snappers, but as candidates have dropped out, the Democrats have been left nearly all by themselves on the app (Ted Cruz and Donald Trump both have accounts, but post only occasionally). Sanders and Clinton are a tale of two Snapchats – both with very different posting styles and strategies on how to use it to nab the youth vote.

So what do they post on the social media platform that, according to Nielsen, reaches 41% of all 18-34-year-old Americans on any given day?

“We definitely treat it as a different medium,” said Sigala. “For Snapchat we do try to give our supporters a very behind-the-scenes-type look, something you don’t get on other social media platforms. Our supporters feel a very deep ownership on this campaign and it’s kind of like they’re checking in on their investments.”

Read the full piece here.

How excited should Donald Trump’s detractors be if he goes splat in Wisconsin? Like every question of this kind at this stage of the race, the answers is some version of “it depends.”

It depends for example on what happens in New York:

The same is true on the Democratic side, except moreso. A narrow win in Wisconsin for Sanders would not net him many delegates, while a narrow win for Clinton in much-bigger New York – not that she necessarily will win New York? – could net her many delegates:

Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report keeps his eye on Republican delegate math, and sees Trump coming up short – but well within a range that would be closable by swaying unattached delegates in the time period between the last primaries and the convention:

The exit poll temptation

In keeping with tradition, we hereby supply you with links to exit polls – data compiled from interviews conducted with voters outside polling stations – which are likely to be meaningless, unless they are indicative.

Here’s a teaser: more than 80% of Democratic primary voters in Wisconsin were white, according to exit polls.

And: more than 85% of Trump voters say the Republican presidential nomination should fall to the candidate with the most delegates – even if no one candidate captures a majority, according to exit polls.

Updated

Which election issues matter most to you? Tell us

As the primary season presses on, we’re getting a better sense of the candidates’ electability.

While they’re trading insults and accusations, tell us which issues matter most to you and why. Your contributions will help shape our election coverage.

Cruz: I would arm the cheese curds

An ABC News reporter asks Ted Cruz whether he would “arm the cheese curds,” in jocular reference both to a local Wisconsin delicacy and... the Kurd Kurds.

Cruz is hawkish on the cheese curds question. More about cheese curds.

(h/t @bencjacobs)

Updated

Any takers?

You can read that coverage here.

Thompson in 1972 with George McGovern, the eventual nominee. Not pictured: George Wallace.
Thompson in 1972 with George McGovern, the eventual nominee. Not pictured: George Wallace. Photograph: CSU Archv/Everett / Rex Features

Cruz edges Trump for first time in Reuters poll

Ted Cruz has for the first time rated higher than Donald Trump in a Reuters-Ipsos poll of a hypothetical national nominating race between the two.

Of note: the poll measures ranges of support, and Trump at the top of his range is still ahead of Cruz at the bottom of his. But the sweet spot in Cruz’s range has just now lifted past Trump’s.

A click-through tells the whole story.

Number one.
Number one. Photograph: Nam Y. Huh/AP

Clinton: Republicans 'do want to punish women'

Hillary Clinton isn’t letting Donald Trump off the hook for controversial remarks about abortion last week – saying the GOP frontrunner’s “abortion should be punished” comments reflect his party’s views, writes Guardian reporter Amber Jamieson from Brooklyn:

“They do want to ban abortion and they do want to punish women and doctors, he just made the sin of saying what they believe,” Clinton told a crowded “Women for Hillary” event at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn this afternoon.

Clinton had several barbs for the local billionaire, including one attacking his plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

“The fellow who’s actually from New York? I wish he’d get out of one of his towers and walk the streets,” said Clinton. “Peddling prejudice and paranoia is not the New York way.”

She also slammed Ted Cruz’s plan to monitor Muslim neighborhoods, noting that Muslims live everywhere. “How’s he ever going to figure that out in New York is beyond me,” Clinton said. “Maybe other cities have signs?”

A proud grandmother hoists an unsure tot.
A proud grandmother hoists an unsure tot. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Clinton was introduced to the stage by Yvette Clarke, the Brooklyn congresswoman, and Chirlane McCray, the city’s first lady.

The venue was at capacity and scores of people were refused entry – although inside it didn’t seem packed. The New York state primary is 19 April, and Clinton is pushing hard for some local love from the state where she served as senator.

“I believe the values of New York are the values of America,” she said, which got the crowd on their feet cheering and a line of people asking her for selfies.

Updated

Just under three hours now until polls close in Wisconsin.

To-reorient late joiners: there are 42 delegates at stake on the Republican side this evening, with 18 going to the plurality winner of the statewide vote, and three each going to the plurality winner in each of the state’s eight congressional districts. As Scott pointed out earlier, the districts comport roughly (although not exactly) with the state’s counties.

On the Democratic side, 86 delegates are to be awarded proportionally tonight. A narrow win for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would thus, bragging rights aside, not much budge the delegates race.

Donald Trump has captured 737 delegates, Ted Cruz has captured 475 and John Kasich has captured 143. They’re trying to get to 1,237.

Clinton has captured 1,712 delegates, and Sanders has captured 1,011. They’re trying to get to 2,383.

You can check out our comprehensive delegate tracker here. Thanks for joining us and, as always, we invite you to make your predictions and state your opinions (or vent your enthusiasms and frustrations) in the comments.

There was heavy traffic in and out of Waukesha County’s Pewaukee City Hall in the 4pm local hour, as residents of Wards 8, 9 and 10 streamed in and out to cast their school board, state and local judiciary and presidential primary ballots.

Residents who had to re-register because of a change of address were steered into a separate conference room to complete the process – and though the precinct chair lamented that more people hadn’t done so earlier, she said it was better for them to do so now than on election night in November.

As one long-time 92-year-old poll worker greeted friends and neighbors, voters lined up to slide their Scantron-type ballots into a machine and collect their I-Voted stickers. (One particularly enthusiastic toddler was granted leave to take two, and he left in his mother’s arms, waving one and grinning wildly.)

Election workers said the site had been busy all day, though there hadn’t been lines out the door since the morning hours. Still, with a few hours left to vote and people fighting rush hour traffic to the suburban Milwaukee town, they expected it to heat up again.

And after the last ballot is cast – they had more than 1,100 for the day already in addition to 1,800 early in-person absentees – poll workers would have to hand-check every ballot, separate them by ward, count them and make sure all the tallies matched up before calling anything in.

In a tight race, that could make for quite a long night.

Updated

Voter says tribal ID turned down at polling site

Collin Price, 33, is an enrolled member of the federally recognized Ho-Chunk Native American tribe in Tomah, Wisconsin. As such, he carries a tribal-issued photo ID, one of 12 tribal IDs recognized by the state of Wisconsin for the purposes of voter identification.

(Only those with ID cards from tribes with land in Wisconsin – there are 11 Wisconsin-based tribes and one Minnesota-based tribe that qualify – can use them to vote in the state.)

But when Price showed up in Tomah to vote today and, because he recently moved had to re-register under his new address, he says that the poll worker refused to accept his tribal ID for the purpose of re-registration.

“I didn’t want to get in a heated argument”, he said. “But everything on my end was saying that I could use my ID.”

Still, he said, the woman processing his change of address insisted: his driver’s license, or he wouldn’t be allowed to vote. She said that another Native American voter had come in earlier and shown his tribal ID, and that’s what she’d been told to say.

So he pulled out his driver’s license and was able to vote.

“What if I didn’t have my driver’s license?” he asked.

According to a Brennan Center report, Native Americans in Wisconsin are 38.6% more likely to have moved recently that white Wisconsinites, which makes them more likely to have to re-register. And Price was right: according to the state’s website, he should have been able to use his tribal ID to both re-register and to vote.

“I like to vote!” he said. “I like getting my sticker.”

Updated

Hillary Clinton said she wishes Donald Trump would “get out of one of his towers and walk the streets,” reports the Guardian’s Amber Jamieson from a Women for Hillary event at Medgar Evers college in Brooklyn. Amber has been live-tweeting the event, with a longer file to come:

Crowd at Clinton’s event is super diverse, majority African-Americans and people of colour - mainly women, mainly mid 30s and older.

“What I want to do is just talk about some of the issues” - says Clinton, as she asks her staff to remove the lectern.

Chant guy - I assume he works for the campaign - starts “Hillary” chant, then Fight Song plays.

Updated

Sanders on Panama papers: I'd 'prosecute'

Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders has released a statement on the 11.5m files within the Panama Papers, documents from the major offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca.

“We now know, as a result of the ‘Panama Papers’ released by an international consortium of investigative journalists, that more than 214,000 entities throughout the world have been using a law firm in Panama to avoid paying taxes,” the Sanders statement said, continuing:

At a time of massive income and wealth inequality in the United States and around the world, the wealthiest people and largest corporations must start paying their fair share of taxes. Children should not go hungry while billionaires use offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. [...]

My opponent ... helped push the Panama Free Trade Agreement through Congress as Secretary of State. The results have been a disaster.

A bunch of nonchalant Wisconsinites and one happy young woman on Instagram.
A bunch of nonchalant Wisconsinites and one happy young woman on Instagram. Photograph: Mike De Sisti/AP

My administration will conduct an immediate investigation into U.S. banks, corporations and wealthy individuals who have been stashing their cash in Panama to avoid taxes. If any of them have violated U.S. law, my administration will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”

At 2pm local time, students near the front of a voter registration line stretching nearly two-thirds of the way around the first floor of Marquette University’s Alumni Memorial Hall were about to be late for class after a two-hour wait.

The students, who are subject to more stringent voter identification requirements than any other group in the state if they choose or have to use their student ID cards to vote, had to, like all voters in the state, re-register to vote if their current address differs from the one on their ID.

It makes for a long wait, especially when they additionally have to show one of the six people working the registration tables proof of current enrollment.

Precinct workers said that the polling station and registration lines had been busy all day, as campus staff swirled around trying to make sure there was no one in the registration line who could simply vote and to make sure the hallways remained clear.

Students manning a Mental Health Week table by the front door of the building said that the line for registration in the morning was less than half the length, and students standing at that point said they’d already been waiting two hours. They likely had another 90 minutes to wait.

Some students, seeing the line, gave up and left; another chatting to a friend confided that his friends had saved him a place, as he’d had classes all morning and had a meeting with his advisor at 3pm.

He likely had another 90 minutes to wait, from where he stood.

This is the line to register to vote. The kids at the front have been waiting for 90 minutes.

Hillary Clinton: You can be a feminist and pro-life

In an interview on The View this afternoon, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton told the all-female panel that she believes that people who oppose abortion access can still be feminists.

“Do you believe you can be pro-life and a feminist?” co-host and former Full House star Candace Cameron Bure asked Clinton.

“Yes, I do, absolutely,” Clinton said. “I respect the opinions and beliefs of every woman. The reason why being pro-choice is the right way to go is because it is a choice, and hopefully a choice that is rooted in the thoughtfulness and the care that women bring to this decision, so of course you can be a feminist and be pro-life.”

The candidate was also asked about comments made on Meet the Press this past Sunday, in which she stated that an “unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights,” in reference to so-called “personhood” bills.

“Under our law, that is the case,” Clinton said. “I support Roe v. Wade because I think it is an important statement about the importance of a woman making this most difficult decision with consultation by whom she chooses, her doctor, her faith, her family, and under the law, and under certainly that decision, that is the way we structure it.”

At the Clinton Rose Senior Center in Milwaukee, poll workers said at lunch time that traffic had been steady all day as people, mostly African-American, filed in to vote, showed their newly-required photo identifications and left with lollipops.

Outside the rec room in which the electronic voting booths were set up, a groups of older women, one in a wheelchair, waited for a senior assistance bus to take them back to their homes. One of the staff brought over a speaker and played a jazz song with a beat, so two women got up and danced as the others applauded to urge them on and
gossiped with one another.

When their bus driver himself finished voting, they walked back out in pairs and got back on the bus, laughing and chattering away.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued a statement about Mississippi’s new law allowing for discrimination against LGBT people:

“Gov. Phil Bryant’s decision to sign HB 1523 into law is unconscionable. This newly enacted law - like the draconian anti-LGBT laws in other states - uses the guise of ‘religious freedom’ to justify discrimination, mistreatment and bigotry. It’s the same sort of rationale used by white supremacists in earlier eras to justify slavery and Jim Crow. The estimated 60,000 LGBT people in Mississippi deserve better. We need to stand up for the rights of all people.

The governor of Mississippi has signed into law a bill that allows private and public businesses to refuse service to same-sex couples, so long as that couple’s existence conflicts with the “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” of the business owner.

Governor Phil Bryant released a statement on Twitter after signing House Bill 1523, also known as the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,” protesting accusations that the bill facilitates discrimination against LGBT Mississippians. Instead, Bryant said, the bill “merely reinforces the rights which currently exist to the exercise of religious freedom as stated in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

The bill, which additionally asserts that marriage “is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman” and that sexual relations are “properly reserved” only for such unions, is also the first statewide legislation to codify the belief that transgender individuals are to be considered members of the gender they are assigned at birth, regardless of their own gender identity.

“Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth,” the measure states.

While individuals, businesses and charities may decline to provide services to LGBT customers, the bill still requires to the state government to provide services - although it does allow government employees to opt out of providing services individually.

“[The bill] does not attempt to challenge federal laws, even those which are in conflict with the Mississippi Constitution, as the Legislature recognizes the prominence of federal law in such limited circumstances,” Bryant wrote.

“This is a sad day for the state of Mississippi and for the thousands of Mississippians who can now be turned away from businesses, refused marriage licenses, or denied housing, essential services and needed care based on who they are,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi released in a statement. “This bill flies in the face of the basic American principles of fairness, justice and equality and will not protect anyone’s religious liberty. Far from protecting anyone from ‘government discrimination’ as the bill claims, it is an attack on the citizens of our state, and it will serve as the Magnolia State’s badge of shame.”

In the latest issue of Variety, Megyn Kelly told the magazine that Donald Trump’s continued attacks on her pose a threat to the first amendment of the US constitution. “I’ve seen what’s happened with Michelle Fields and in my own world, there’s another side to this behavior,” Kelly said. “It poses real risks to the person under attack.”

Megyn Kelly at the first official Republican presidential candidates debate of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Megyn Kelly at the first official Republican presidential candidates debate of the 2016 presidential campaign. Photograph: Aaron Josefczyk/REUTERS

“It has not been enjoyable,” she said of Trump’s attacks since the first Republican debate in Cleveland, in which she questioned his past history of misogynist remarks. “I wish it hadn’t happened. I hope it will stop - his focus on me. If he’s determined not to stop, there’s nothing I can do. I don’t like being the story. I think it raises real First Amendment issues.”

Still, Kelly sees Trump as the most likely person to seize the Republican presidential nomination.

“The smart money is on Hillary right now, and I think the smart money is on Trump too. It’s going to take a lot to stop him,” she said. “I don’t see a clear path for Kasich or Cruz. Something extraordinary would have to happen, but this whole year has been extraordinary.”

Updated

Wisconsin is bracing for chaos on election day as its new voter ID law - the strictest in the country - faces its first test in a high-turnout election, the Guardian’s Megan Carpentier reports.

A voter leaves a polling stations after casting their ballot in the Wisconsin presidential primary election in Milwaukee.
A voter leaves a polling stations after casting their ballot in the Wisconsin presidential primary election in Milwaukee. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters

Tuesday’s state primary in Wisconsin – which is also a general election for state and local judicial candidates – will be the first high-turnout election here since the law went into effect. The state’s government accountability board estimates that about 40% of the state’s eligible voters will go to the polls, which would be the highest turnout in a primary since 1980.

Advocates for and against the law agree that approximately 300,000 eligible voters lack eligible photo IDs – in part because, as a staffer for the voter ID bill’s lead sponsor, state representative Jeff Stone, told the Racine Journal Times in 2012: “When the bill was being drafted, we were trying to limit the number [of eligible forms of identification], not expand it.”

The list of eligible identification is, as a result, short. If the cards were valid as of the 2014 general election, voters can show: a Wisconsin driver’s license; a non-driver’s ID issued by the state department of transportation; a military ID card issued by a US uniformed service; a US passport; or an identification card issued by a federally recognized Native American tribe with land in Wisconsin.

Those rules mean, for example, that tribal IDs from tribes without land in Wisconsin are ineligible; expired driver’s licenses or passports are ineligible; and out-of-state licenses, even if valid, are ineligible, among other commonly used forms of ID. And, advocates note, the state’s computer systems went down for three hours on Friday, which caused problems for in-person absentee voters and those attempting to obtain eligible identification before the primary.

Barack Obama calls Donald Trump's border wall proposal "half-baked," "draconian"

In a press briefing at the White House, Barack Obama rolled his eyes and dismissed billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s proposed method of extorting the Mexican government into paying for a billion-dollar wall along the US southern border, calling the suggestion “whacky.”

Barack Obama delivers a statement on April 5.
Barack Obama delivers a statement on April 5. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

The president expressed dismay at the mention of Trump’s proposal during the briefing, which was focused on the government’s response to the released of the so-called Panama Papers by the Guardian and other media outlets.

“Oh no, it’s Trump,” Obama said, muted laughter.

When asked to respond to Trump’s plan, which would involve threatening to halt money transfers from Mexican immigrants in the US to family back home, Obama dismissed it as “not thought through” and “primarily put forward for political consumption.”

“I am getting questions constantly from foreign leaders about some of the wackier suggestions that are being made,” Obama said, saying that such proposals hurt US standing abroad. “It’s not just Mr Trump’s proposals - you’re also hearing concerns about Mr Cruz’s proposals, which in some ways are just as draconian.”

“We’ve got big issues around the world,” he continued. “People expects the president of the United States and the elected officials in this country to treat these problems seriously. They don’t expect half-banked notions coming out of the White House. We can’t afford that.”

Updated

As her campaign braces for a potential loss in the Wisconsin primary, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton received some good news today in the form of a new poll out in Pennsylvania, showing her leading Vermont senator Bernie Sanders by more than 20 points in the Keystone State with three weeks to go before its primary.

The Harper Polling survey of likely Democratic voters found that Clinton is backed by 55% of those who are likely to show up on election day, compared to just 33% for Sanders. According to the survey, 12% of Pennsylvania voters are still undecided.

There is a silver lining for Sanders, however: The same survey found Clinton leading by 30 points in March, meaning that the self-described democratic socialist is successfully eating into Clinton’s lead in the delegate-rich state.

On the heels of Donald Trump’s proposed ban on remittances to Mexico as a way to coerce the Mexican government to pay for a billion-dollar wall along the US southern border, the Guardian’s Tom Dart reports from McAllen, Texas, where the candidate’s plan is causing many in Central America to flee to Texas’s Rio Grande valley.

Families of Central American immigrants turn themselves in to US Border Patrol agents after crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico to McAllen, Texas.
Families of Central American immigrants turn themselves in to US Border Patrol agents after crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico to McAllen, Texas. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

Catalina Maldonado wanted to flee El Salvador for the US to protect her son from danger. After learning of Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico, she decided it was now or maybe never.

If the Republican candidate’s supporters might be delighted that some in Central America are treating the prospect of a wall-raising President Trump with high seriousness, in the short term it appears his rhetoric may be encouraging – not dissuading – migrants to head north to escape poverty and violence.

“We heard he wants to build those walls. That’s why we came,” Maldonado said. “A lot of people are talking about it in El Salvador. They say really bad things about him,” the 34-year-old added through a translator in a shelter in Texas’s Rio Grande valley, the centre of the 2014 surge in unauthorized crossings by families and unaccompanied minors and still the busiest route.

More than half of the lone children and families caught crossing the south-west border this fiscal year have been apprehended in the area, which offers the shortest journey from Central America, has sizable populations on both sides of the frontier, flat terrain and dense scrubland and where the only barrier between the US and Mexico is natural: the narrow, serpentine Rio Grande river.

Donald Trump finally reveals how he will pay for his border wall

Billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has finally revealed how he plans to force Mexico to pay for his multi-billion-dollar wall along the US southern border, a lynchpin of his presidential campaign that has never been fully detailed before.

Donald Trump gestures at a news conference near the U.S.- Mexico border outside of Laredo, Texas.
Donald Trump gestures at a news conference near the U.S.- Mexico border outside of Laredo, Texas. Photograph: Rick Wilking/Reuters

The key to the wall’s financing, Trump wrote in a two-page memo to the Washington Post, is threatening to halt money transfers from Mexican immigrants in the US to family back home. These remittances amount to nearly $25 billion each year, roughly 2% of the Mexican gross domestic product, according to the World Bank. Cutting off these money transfers could doom the Mexican economy to recession and severely damage diplomatic relations.

“It’s an easy decision for Mexico,” Trump wrote in the memo, written on campaign stationary emblazoned with his “Make America Great Again!” motto. “Make a one-time payment of $5-$10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.”

Trump has previously estimated the cost of building the wall at $8bn.

In the memo, entitled “Compelling Mexico to Pay for the Wall,” Trump said that on the first day of his presidency he would warn the Mexican government of a new regulation that would allow for the government’s seizure of financial assets by immigrants unless they provide documentation establishing “lawful presence in the United States.”

The feasibility and legality of such a maneuver is unclear. “Trump is giving an extremely broad definition of this section of the Patriot Act and what it allows, and it’d surely be litigated,” Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, told the Washington Post. “It would be a large expansion beyond what the text reads.”

Trump’s memo cites additional examples of diplomatic arm-twisting , including an increase in tariffs on Mexican imports, putting a halt to legal immigration and increasing fees for visas and green cards. “Immigration is a privilege, not a right,” Trump wrote. “Mexico is totally dependent on the United States as a release valve for its own poverty.”

He concluded his memo by lambasting current immigration rates, writing that “gangs, drug traffickers and cartels have freely exploited our open borders and committed vast numbers of crimes inside the United States.”

“We have the moral high ground here, and all the leverage,” Trump concluded. “It is time we use it.”

Updated

Want to know why Ted Cruz is leading in Wisconsin?

This advertisement from the state’s thrice-elected governor - and onetime presidential candidate - could help explain it.

Correspondents in Wisconsin say it’s been running practically on loop on local television stations.

Where are the candidates today?

As the five remaining presidential hopefuls scramble for last-minute support in Wisconsin, here’s an updated schedule for where they’ll be making appearances today:

Hillary Clinton

Joined by congresswomen Yvette Clarke and New York City’s first late, Chirlane McCray, the former secretary of state will host a Women for Hillary town hall meeting in Brooklyn, the site of her campaign headquarters and a key battleground in the upcoming New York primary.

Where: Medgar Evers Gymnasium, 1650 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn
Time: 3:45 pm EDT
Doors open: 1:30 pm EDT
RSVP here, if you’re free.

Bernie Sanders

The Vermont senator is holding a rally in scenic Laramie, Wyoming. According to his campaign, Sanders will discuss “getting big money out of politics, his plan to make public colleges and universities tuition-free, combating climate change and ensuring universal health care.”

Where: The Arts & Sciences Auditorium at the University of Wyoming, 1000 East University Avenue, Laramie
Time: 5 pm MDT
RSVP here, if you’re free.

Ted Cruz

The Texas senator is hosting an election-night watch party in Milwaukee ahead of what he hopes will be a triumphant performance in the Wisconsin primary. Having attended one of Cruz’s watch parties ourselves, expect a lot of M&Ms and a fair number of people selling swag.

Where: American Serb Hall, 5101 West Oklahoma Avenue, Milwaukee
Time: 7 pm to 10 pm CDT
RSVP here, if you’re free.

Neither Donald Trump nor John Kasich have any public events scheduled today.

With the consensus growing that neither billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump nor Texas senator Ted Cruz will be able to clinch the Republican nomination before the party’s convention in Cleveland this summer, the word from Washington is that members of the party establishment are already moving to support a so-called “white knight” nominee.

That nominee? Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

According to a report from the Huffington Post, billionaire industrialist/Tea Party puppetmaster Charles Koch is privately backing the speaker’s nomination during a contested Republican convention in July.

Ryan, for his part, has openly declared that he’s not interested in the position, telling the Times of Israel while in Jerusalem this weekend that “if you’re going to be president, I think you should start in Iowa and run to the tape.” Of course, Ryan was similarly disinterested in the speakership during the last Republican leadership crisis, and we all know how that turned out.

According to the Huffington Post, Ryan would only be open to the idea of accepting a “consensus” nomination if the Republican party unified behind him - an admittedly difficult portrait to paint after a bloodthirsty primary season in which both Trump and Cruz have implicitly threatened open rebellion of the party establishment seizes the nomination from the primary voters.

A look at the polls...

Although it’s important to remember that polls can often be totally wrong, they are helpful in framing the narrative of the primary night: Who met expectations? Who exceeded them? Who failed to match them?

Bernie Sanders speaks to guests at a campaign rally at the Wisconsin Convention Center in Milwaukee.
Bernie Sanders speaks to guests at a campaign rally at the Wisconsin Convention Center in Milwaukee. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

With that in mind, Wisconsin is going to be interesting tonight. In six of the last seven polls of likely Republican voters, Texas senator Ted Cruz came out on top in the Badger State, leading billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump by anywhere from one to ten points.

It’s not great news for Trump, who needs to win 55% of the remaining delegates up for grabs to clinch the party’s nomination ahead of the convention in July. If polls showing a potential double-digit victory for Cruz end up being accurate, Trump’s window to winning the nomination outright grows tighter. (To be fair, Cruz’s insistence that he has “a clear path” to winning the nomination ahead of the convention is a near-absolute fantasy, regardless of how well he performs tonight: He would need to win roughly 80% of the remaining delegates to win the nomination ahead of the convention.)

For the Democrats, the polling situation is a little tighter and a little more fluid. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders leads former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in five of the last seven polls conducted, in leads ranging from two to eight points. In the polls in which she is ahead, Clinton’s lead is tighter - between one and six points.

Without the benefit of the Republican “winner-take-most” delegate allocation structure, however, tonight’s victory will be blunted by momentum, no matter who wins. At this point, Sanders needs to win 67% of party’s remaining delegates and superdelegates to win the Democratic nomination, a high hurdle for a candidate who has won less than 40% of the delegates up for grabs so far.

Updated

All eyes on Wisconsin

Happy primary day!

Hello, and welcome to our continuing coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. This morning, the eyes of a primary-weary nation have turned to America’s Dairyland, where both Democratic and Republican presidential aspirants hope that victories in tonight’s only primary will strengthen their claim to the nomination – or, at least, make it harder for their opponents to do so.

Donald Trump speaks during a town hall event in La Crosse.
Donald Trump speaks during a town hall event in La Crosse. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters

A few must-knows for tonight’s primary:

Polls close in Wisconsin at 9 pm ET. The Badger State is reputed to have relatively quick returns, which means that unless the races are close – results from Milwaukee, as in all cities, will likely come in a little later than smaller precincts – we should be able to wrap this up before bedtime.

For Republicans, Wisconsin is known as a “winner-take-most” state. This means that all 42 of its delegates will be apportioned tonight, with 18 going to the winner of a plurality of the state’s vote and three more delegates awarded to the winner of each of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts. The districts comport roughly (although not exactly) with the state’s counties, which means we should be able to make a rough guesstimate of the delegate totals sometime this evening. With 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination, frontrunner Donald Trump has 737 (500 short), Texas senator Ted Cruz has 475 (762 short), and Ohio governor John Kasich has 143 (1,094 short).

On the Democratic side, Wisconsin’s 86 delegates are appointed proportionally, which means that a victory by either Vermont senator Bernie Sanders or former secretary of state Hillary Clinton will be relatively blunted – unless one of them greatly outperforms. With 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination, Clinton has 1,712, including superdelegates (671 short), and Sanders has 1,011 (1,372 short).

The Guardian’s reporting team will be bringing you up-to-the-minute coverage of tonight’s primary results, with Dan Roberts anchoring coverage from Madison, Megan Carpentier watching polling stations, Ben Jacobs attending watch parties, and the rest of us eating Night Cheese in New York.

‘Workin’ on my night cheese!’

Updated

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