Americans cast ballots Tuesday on the most pivotal day of the White House primary season, with frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hoping to wipe out all rivals for their party nominations. Millions of people are taking part in Super Tuesday - a series of primaries and caucuses in a dozen states stretching from Massachusetts and Virginia on the east coast to Texas and all the way to Alaska.
If Democrat Clinton and Republican Trump - an outspoken billionaire who has tapped into a vein of conservative rage at conventional politics - win big, they could be well on their way to the nominations, spelling doom for their challengers. Polling stations opened first in Virginia where a steady stream of voters stopped to cast ballots on a day like few others on the calendar leading up to the November presidential election.
In the swing state's suburban, middle-of-the-road north, some Democrats considered crossing party lines to cast protest ballots against Trump. "Normally I would vote for the Democrats, but I am more afraid of Trump. I still don't know how I will vote," said one woman as she walked into a polling station in Arlington. Steve Slye, who runs an audio visual company in Arlington, said he voted for Ohio Governor John Kasich, who has run a more optimistic campaign than Trump but has failed to generate the enthusiasm necessary to topple the frontrunner.
"He's the adult in the room, to me," he said. Trump's main Republican rivals, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have been frantically trying to halt the real estate magnate's march toward the nomination, seeking to unite the party against the man they see as a non-conservative political interloper. But it might be too little too late, with polls showing Trump in a commanding lead in most Super Tuesday states and beyond. Former secretary of state Clinton, coming off a blow-out weekend win in South Carolina, is also leading her rival Senator Bernie Sanders by similarly significant margins.
Even as Clinton made her final case to voters Tuesday in Minnesota, she appeared to tilt toward the general election matchup, assailing Republicans "running their campaigns based on insults." Asked if Trump would be the eventual nominee, she told reporters "he could be on the path." But "whoever they nominate, I'll be prepared to run against if I'm fortunate to be the nominee."
A new CNN/ORC poll found that both Clinton and Sanders would easily defeat Trump if the general elections were held now. If Rubio or Cruz were the Republican nominee, Clinton would face a much closer race. Strikingly, Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, topped all three Republican candidates by wide margins, the poll showed. Trump's incendiary campaign has infuriated Republican rivals, including mainstream favourite Rubio who has intensified his personal attacks. The Florida senator warned supporters in Tennessee Monday that Democratic groups will jump on Trump "like the hounds of hell" if he wins the nomination. Trump received a stern rebuke Tuesday from House Speaker Paul Ryan over his failure to immediately denounce the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
"If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry," Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, told reporters. "This party does not prey on people's prejudices." Trump remains in the driver's seat. He is leading in polls in at least eight of the 11 Super Tuesday states, and expanding his lead nationally with CNN/ORC giving him 49 percent support. Rubio is a distant second at 16 percent, with Cruz one point further behind.
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