Donald Trump looks unstoppable as he cleans up on Super Tuesday

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both continued to consolidate their leads for the Republican and Democratic nomination for the US presidency, after a major day of voting on Super Tuesday.

11 states went to the polls yesterday (March 1) to select their choice for the nominations, in the US primary season’s single biggest day of voting, where around 25% of the delegates these candidates are attempting to collect were up for grabs.

The stakes were high as Trump’s Republican opponents needed this opportunity to try and stop his advances, but they failed: Trump took Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas and Vermont, while Ted Cruz took Oklahoma, Alaska and his home state of Texas. Marco Rubio is now trailing in third place, having taken only Minnesota.

Trump now has 285 of the 1,237 delegates needed to claim the nomination.

Republican

Only a united front behind one candidate (likely Cruz) could now challenge Trump as the campaign goes forward, but his advances look too strong, and his success now appears inevitable. It is rumoured that party establishment figures are gearing up for an unprecedented ‘brokered convention’, in which he would be challenged when the party meets to inaugurate him in a few months.

On the Democratic side, it was a chance for Hillary Clinton to push forward and shake off Bernie Sanders. Although she triumphed, with wins in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Texas, Massachusetts, and the South Pacific territory of American Samoa, Sanders won in Vermont, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Colorado, meaning he isn’t out of the game just yet.

Clinton now has 1,001 of the 2,383 delegates she needs to win the nomination, while Sanders trails with 371.

Democrat

This weekend, further primaries will be held in states like Kansas, Louisiana and Maine, but all candidates are looking to Florida on March 15, where a huge number of delegates are up for grabs. Both Trump and Clinton were already in the sunny state last night when results were being declared, with Trump telling reporters, “Once we get all this finished, I’m going after one person – Hillary Clinton.”

“I watched Hillary’s speech and she’s talking about, ‘Wages have been poor, and everything’s poor, and everything’s doing badly, but we’re going to make it.’ She’s been there for so long,” Trump said, referring to Clinton’s career. “I mean, if she hasn’t straightened it out by now, she’s not going to straighten it out in the next four years. It’s just going to become worse and worse,” he added.

Clinton has attacked Trump’s main campaign promise to “make America great again,” saying that America has never stopped being great, and she would rather “make America whole again.”

Trump responded by saying: “She wants to make America whole again, and I’m trying to figure out what is that all about,” Trump said. “‘Make America great again’ is going to be much better than making America whole again.”

The victorious Republican and Democratic nominees will be appointed at their respective party conventions in the summer, before facing each other in what is sure to be the most polarising US election in living memory, this November.

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