Florida, Ohio and other states vote – what we learned

We’ve come to the end of another election night of primary voting – and did we just come up with a general election contest?

Multiple campaigns and serial pundits might deny it. And in fact there remain slim chances that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton might not be our future presidential nominees. Trump appeared to have more significant obstacles than Clinton, with a difficult path to an outright delegate majority and influential members of his party actively working against him.

But with results in Missouri in both party’s races still too close to call, Clinton has won four out of four other states on the Democratic side, and Trump has won three out of four, dropping Ohio to home-state governor John Kasich.

Here’s a summary of where things stand:

• Hillary Clinton romped through the Democratic races, with a very large 31-point win in Florida supercharging her delegate lead.
• Donald Trump dropped Ohio to Kasich but won three of the other four contests, including Florida, where he picked up 99 delegates. He could end up with four wins out of five total, with the Missouri result still unresolved.
• Florida senator Marco Rubio suspended his campaign after losing every county in his home state to Trump but Miami-Dade, where he lives.
• Texas senator Ted Cruz challenged Trump in Missouri in a race too close to call. He called it a two-man race for the nomination, pointing to his previous wins.
• Kasich said he would stay in the race through the national convention in July, asserting that Trump could not get to the 1,237 majority of delegates he needs to win outright – the idea being to precipitate a contested convention and fight it out.
• Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders held a large rally in Phoenix, Arizona, in which he did not mention the night’s results. But the Vermont senator later released a statement saying: “We remain confident that our campaign is on a path to win the nomination.”
• The demographics look good for Sanders in the next handful of races but not as good afterwards. Trump seems well positioned in north-eastern states to vote soon – but could face difficulty in the Rockies and out west. Here’s a schedule of upcoming voting.
• The two races split a bit from here, with Democrats voting solo in five states in the next month. The next big voting is a week from now, in Arizona, Idaho and Utah.
• Here are the delegate counts as they stand: