Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton appear poised to dominate in the Super Tuesday primary state voting March 1, and Donald Trump has widened his lead nationally over a diminishing GOP field, according to various national and state polls.
According to the latest CNN/ORC poll (conducted Feb. 24-27), Trump has 49% of Republicans, 33 points ahead of his closest rival, Marco Rubio, with Ted Cruz at 15% (essentially Rubio and Cruz are in a statistical tie for second).
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has 55% of Democratic voters to Sanders 38%.
If Trump and Clinton do dominate, they will be in strong position to grab their respective nominations, though Ted Cruz is leading in his home state of Texas, which would give him more than a quarter (155) of the delegates at stake.
A dozen states (and American Samoa) hold their primaries March 1 and Trump and Clinton lead in most of those. There are 595 delegates at stake on the Republican side and 865 on the Democratic, according to an NPR Super Tuesday primer.
A total of 2,383 delegates are needed to win the Democratic nomination and 1,237 needed to win the Republican nod. Political scientist Josh Putnam, interviewed for the Washington Post, says the different totals are because the Republicans only allocate three delegates per congressional district, whether or not it is heavily Republican, while Democrats allocate more delegates in Democrat-heavy districts.
