/ AFP PHOTO /
by Jennie MATTHEW
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Manhattan billionaire Donald Trump and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton won the New York primary on Tuesday, galvanizing their bids to win the Republican and Democratic nominations for the White House.
US networks called the race for the Republican frontrunner seconds after the polls closed in the country’s fourth most populous state, signaling a crushing victory over his rivals.
“I have to say to the people that know me the best — the people of New York — when they give us this kind of a vote it’s just incredible,” the 69-year-old businessman told a victory party at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Trump, whose campaign has appalled the Republican establishment, led on 65.1 percent to 13.7 percent for his evangelical rival Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich on 21.2 percent, with nine percent of the vote counted CNN said.
He told supporters his campaign was going to “get a lot more delegates than anyone projected even in their wildest imagination.”
Clinton was declared the winner over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders around 40 minutes after the polls closed.
The former first lady and New York senator had 60.5 percent of the vote, against 39.5 percent for Sanders, CNN said based on nearly half of precincts reporting.
Clinton had banked on victory in her adopted home state to stall the momentum generated by her self-styled democratic socialist rival and get a needed shot in the arm after losing seven out of the eight previous nominating contests.
It was New York’s most decisive primary in decades and Trump’s victory in the state, which has 95 Republican delegates in play, will bolster his quest to sew up the nomination before party grandees can swing behind another candidate at the convention in July.
While New York City is largely Democrat, Republicans in rural areas and fallen manufacturing cities upstate warmed to Trump’s populist message, despite his insults towards women, Mexicans and Muslims.
‘A great time’
A relaxed and confident-looking Clinton, 68, dressed in a colorful tunic, voted earlier on Tuesday with husband, former president Bill Clinton, in the leafy Chappaqua suburb they call home.
“I had a great time going around the city in the last couple of days just seeing a lot of old friends, meeting new people,” she said.
The three main candidates also claimed New York as home: Trump, who has never lived anywhere else; Clinton, who was twice elected the state’s US senator; and Sanders, who was raised in Brooklyn.
The 74-year-old Sanders — who has galvanized a youth movement with his call for health care as a right, free college education and campaign finance reform — was hoping for a win or a close margin to keep alive his White House dreams.
Clinton currently leads with 1,791 compared to 1,115 for Sanders, according to a CNN tally — putting her on course to clinch the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the party’s presidential nomination.
It was not immediately clear how many of the 247 Democratic delegates and 44 superdelegates up for grabs in New York will be accorded to Clinton.
There had been deep frustrations over New York’s strict rules governing the vote, particularly among independent voters not allowed to participate and who could have been expected to favor Sanders.
Only New York’s 5.8 million Democrats and 2.7 million Republicans who registered by last October — four months before the nation’s first caucus election in Iowa — are eligible to vote.
Voters and rights monitors reported numerous errors on voting lists in Brooklyn, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the electoral roll.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has endorsed Clinton, called on the board of election to rectify the lists.
“The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed,” he said.
Turnout was brisk at polling stations visited by AFP in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where a string of Democrats said they had voted for Clinton, who would make history if elected as America’s first woman president.
“I think she’s got the record across all of the issues that matter to me,” said Rachel Karpf, 30, an arts producer who works in theater and lives in Brooklyn.
“I thought about Bernie Sanders quite a bit but I felt more comfortable voting for someone who has already a track record,” she said.
