Jackson Falconer
Each major party's presidential front-runner widened their lead on Tuesday night, when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were declared the victors in their home state of New York.
Polling results prior to the Empire State's primary day had predicted victories for the two winners by significant margins, and those predictions were proven accurate.
As the voting results began coming in, it became clear that Trump would trounce his fellow Republican candidates. With 93 percent of voting precincts reporting at the end of Tuesday night, the businessman was estimated to have 60 percent of New York's vote. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz–the only other GOP candidate in the race with a chance of winning enough delegates to grab the party nomination–received 14.8 percent, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich received 25.2 percent of the vote.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also won in a landslide, receiving 57.7 percent of the vote with 94 percent of precincts reporting. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders received 42.3 percent of New York's vote in a major loss for the candidate. Sanders now trails Clinton 1,424 to 1,149 in pledged delegates.
Despite clear victories, New York's primary also allegedly came with voter irregularities. The state's Board of Elections had reportedly
removed more than 125,000 registered New York Democrats from the voting rolls, nulling their ability to vote. The move was met with harsh criticism from local officials as well as the Sanders campaign, and a voter rights organization called Election Justice USA has advised it would go to Federal court in an attempt to certify provisional ballots from voters purged from the primary.
Trump now has 845 delegates to Cruz's 559. Despite having no conceivable path to the GOP nomination, Kasich is also seemingly staying in the race with 147 delegates.
What's next for Sanders is less certain. According to Danny Freeman of NBC News, the Vermont Senator
departed from his press corps and boarded a plane to his home state of Vermont before polls closed.
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