New York Republican voters overwhelmingly want an outsider candidate to be nominated for president, according to Fox News exit polls from Tuesday's primary – in a potentially promising sign for billionaire businessman Donald Trump.
Trump has led the New York race by double-digits for weeks, and the exit polls suggest his message about the need for change in Washington is resonating among state primary voters.
Asked whether they prefer an outsider, or someone with political experience, GOP voters opted for an outsider, 64-32 percent.
Voters also weighed in on the roiling debate over the nomination process. Seventy-two percent said the party should nominate the candidate with the most votes if nobody enters the convention with a clear majority. Just a quarter of voters said the nominee should be the person delegates prefer.
On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was leading among Hispanic voters, 57-43 percent, in New York.
But among the under 30 crowd, rival Beie Sanders was dominating 69-31 percent, exit polls showed.
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The numbers give an early glimpse into voters’ thinking, with polls set to close in the state at 9 p.m. ET.
The primary-day voting has not been without its problems. State voters, particularly in the Big Apple, ran into an array of reported polling-site glitches earlier Tuesday as they tried to cast ballots – with some locations opening late and others using broken machines.
The Wall Street Joual reported that some voters waited hours to cast ballots at a site in Brooklyn, where workers apparently did not have the keys when it was supposed to open Tuesday moing.
Elsewhere in the borough, voters reportedly were tued away due to technical problems; voters reportedly posted pictures showing spelling errors on some ballots as well.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio also responded Tuesday to reports that thousands of registered Democrats have been dropped from the rolls, especially in Brooklyn. In a statement, the mayor called for major reforms to the election board and voiced support for an audit.
“It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists,” he said in a statement. “I am calling on the Board of Election to reverse that purge and update the lists again …”
Primary front-ruers Clinton and Trump are both seeking big rebound victories Tuesday after recent campaign setbacks.
Clinton, who served as New York’s senator, has touted her coection to voters in her adopted home state, while Brooklyn-bo Sanders has campaigned hard seeking an upset. Looking ahead, however, Sanders was campaigning Tuesday in Pesylvania, which votes next week.
Meanwhile, Trump, who is from Queens, is looking for an overwhelming victory after having crisscrossed the state bashing rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich – and declaring no true New Yorker could vote for them.
At stake is a huge delegate haul.
On the Democratic side, Clinton and Sanders are competing for 247 delegates. Clinton wants a convincing victory to halt rival Sanders' wiing streak -- before New York, Sanders had won seven of the last eight contests -- and blunt his claims of "momentum" in the Democratic race.
The Republicans are battling for 95 delegates. Trump’s double-digit polling lead has been unshakable for weeks. The big question, though, was whether the billionaire businessman can sweep most or even all of the 95 Republican delegates up for grabs. Trump would need to win more than 50 percent of the vote statewide -– and dominate across the congressional districts -- to have a shot at claiming all the delegates.
The importance of every last delegate has only increased in recent weeks as Cruz has appeared to outmaneuver Trump’s campaign in the behind-the-scenes preparations for July’s convention.
Cruz has been laying the groundwork for a contested convention –- where no candidate has the necessary 1,237 delegates to clinch the nomination –- by getting allies elected as delegates, state by state. That way, if voting extends to a second round, some of those pledged to Trump on the first round could peel off and support Cruz. This has heightened the pressure on Trump to clinch the nomination before the Cleveland convention to avoid that scenario, though Cruz’s recent wins have made that harder.
Cruz, who infamously paed Trump's "New York values" earlier in the primary, was bracing for a tough showing in the Empire State. The Texas senator was already looking ahead on the primary calendar, also scheduling events Tuesday in Pesylvania.
"New York is Donald’s home state," Cruz told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly Monday evening. "Of course he will do well in his home state. When we were in Texas, my home state, we walloped him."
Trump leads the GOP race with 756 delegates, ahead of Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 144.
In the Democratic race, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Sanders faces a "close to impossible path to the nomination" and predicted New York would result in Clinton taking "an important step to the nomination." Sanders needs to win 68 percent of the remaining delegates if he hopes to clinch the Democratic nomination.
Clinton herself spent the final hours of campaigning in New York trying to drive up tuout among women and minorities, her most ardent supporters. Since Sunday, she's danced to Latin music at a Brooklyn block party, vowed to defend abortion rights to female supporters in Manhattan, prayed at a black church in Westchester, drunk a bubble tea at a dumpling shop in Flushing and cheered newly unionized workers in Queens.
"We're not taking anything for granted," Clinton said Monday.
The Sanders campaign has held out hope for a closer race, relying on the large crowds at the Vermont senator's rallies translating into votes Tuesday.
"This is a campaign on the move," Sanders shouted to a crowd of thousands gathered along the waterfront in Queens, the Manhattan skyline serving as a dramatic backdrop. "This is a movement getting the establishment very, very nervous."
Clinton has accumulated 1,758 delegates to Sanders' 1,076. Those totals include both pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses, as well as superdelegates, the party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice regardless of how their state votes. It takes 2,383 to win the Democratic nomination.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.