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Fox News projects that Hillary Clinton will beat Beie Sanders in New York’s Democratic presidential primary, based on exit polls and early vote tallies.
Clinton joined Republican Donald Trump in claiming a win out of the Empire State contests Tuesday night, though Trump's projected victory appears far more decisive.
Based on Fox News exit polls, Trump could end up exceeding 50 percent of the vote in the GOP race, which would be a first for him in any state. Fox News can also project that Ohio Gov. John Kasich will place second, leaving Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to finish third.
Fox News exit polls showed a tight race on the Democratic side between Clinton, who represented New York for eight years in the U.S. Senate, and Sanders, who was bo and raised in Brooklyn.
Primary front-ruers Clinton and Trump both were seeking big rebound victories Tuesday after recent campaign setbacks. At stake was a huge delegate haul.
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On the Democratic side, Clinton and Sanders were competing for 247 delegates. Clinton wanted 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. It's unclear what her margin of victory ultimately will be.
Looking ahead, Sanders was campaigning Tuesday in Pesylvania, which votes next week. He hammered his campaign themes about a “rigged” economy and “corrupt” campaign finance system, while urging voters to join him in challenging the status quo.
“We’re goa win this election,” Sanders vowed.
The Republicans were battling for 95 delegates. Trump, originally from Queens, 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 those delegates.
The importance of every last delegate has 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. 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 convention, though Cruz’s recent wins have made that harder.
Cruz, who infamously paed Trump's "New York values" earlier in the primary, had been bracing for a tough showing in the Empire State. The Texas senator was already looking ahead on the primary calendar, tuing his attention to Pesylvania, where he delivered a speech calling on Americans to join together to move the country forward.
"It is time for us to get up, shake it off and be who we were destined to be,” he said.
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."
Clinton herself spent the final hours of campaigning in New York trying to drive up tuout among women and minorities, her most ardent supporters.
The Sanders campaign had held out hope for a closer race, relying on the large crowds at the Vermont senator's rallies translating into votes Tuesday.
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 primary-day voting was not without its problems. Voters ran into an array of 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.
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 -- which the city comptroller has ordered.
“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 …”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.