Frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton embarked on a campaign blitz in New York Sunday for the state's crucial primary as Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders battles to keep his White House dream alive. The overwhelmingly Democrat state votes Tuesday in its most decisive presidential primary in decades as Trump faces the prospect of a contested nomination for the Republican party and with Sanders pinning Clinton into a tighter race than she could once have imagined.
Trump, the Manhattan billionaire, needs to win as many of the 95 Republican delegates up for grabs in the primary to increase his chances of clinching the party nomination before the July convention.
The 247 Democrat delegates in New York, plus 44 superdelegates, are likely to be won mostly by Clinton, giving the former secretary of state and New York senator an unassailable lead over Sanders.
Although nation-wide polls give Clinton a lead of just 47-46 percent over her self-declared Democratic socialist rival, in New York she leads a whopping 53-39 percent, according to a RealClearPolitics poll average.
Clinton, who spent Saturday at a lavish fundraiser in Los Angeles hosted by Hollywood heart throb George Clooney and his lawyer wife Amal, has a string of campaign stops in New York on Sunday.
In a packed afternoon of public appearances, she is booked to appear with local members of Congress in Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and finish with an LGBT event in Manhattan's West Village.
"I'm very hopeful," she told ABC television when asked how sure she was of a victory. "I love being in New York. I love campaigning in New York, downstate, upstate, everywhere in the state."
She looked beyond primary season to the November general election, saying she was confident she could unite the Democratic Party despite increasing acrimony between her camp and Sanders's.
"Let's keep in mind what's most important here," she told ABC. "That is defeating whoever the Republicans put up," she added. "I'm going to hope to secure the nomination and then to work to win the support of the voters who supported Senator Sanders."
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