Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will try to separate themselves from their competitors on Super Tuesday as both frontrunners are in line to rack up the lion’s share of the delegates and build what may be insurmountable leads.
Republicans will battle for 595 delegates while Democrats have 865 delegates at stake tonight.
Trump, who has won three straight nominating contests, has a 33-point lead in the latest national CNN/ORC poll. And according to the RealClearPolitics average of the polls, he has commanding leads in nearly every Super Tuesday state. Trump is up 14.5 percentage points in Virginia, 15.2 in Georgia, 26.8 in Massachusetts, 8.6 in Oklahoma. 17.7 in Alabama, 18 in Tennessee, and 15 in Vermont.
Clinton, fresh off of her South Carolina shellacking last Saturday, is similarly dominant. She leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) by 20 points in Virginia, 35 in Georgia, 30 in Texas, 26 in Tennessee, 29 in Arkansas, 28 in Colorado, and 38 in Alabama. Sanders has a 75-point lead in Vermont while Massachusetts and Oklahoma are toss-up states for Democrats. Sanders may also pull out better-than-expected finishes in the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses.
All eyes, though, will likely be on Texas on both sides of the aisle.
Texas is Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) make-or-break state. He is leading by nearly 10 points in the RealClearPolitics average of the polls and a victory in his home state will give him his second primary victory and an even stronger argument that he—and not a winless Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)—is the best anti-Trump alternative. But a Cruz victory in Texas may not be the worst thing for Trump because it will make it much tougher for GOP elites to force Cruz out of the race.
For Rubio, it will be critical that he finishes the night in second place in the delegate count so he can put forth a more credible argument about why he is the best anti-Trump alternative for Republicans going into the winner-take-all contests on March 15.
For Sanders, a better-than-expected finish in Texas combined with a win in Massachusetts and Oklahoma may be what it takes to give him the momentum to go forward and enable his operatives to put the whopping $40 million he raised last month to good use.
The number of delegates at stake in each state for both parties and the times when polls close are below:
REPUBLICANS (595 total delegates at stake; 1,237/2,340 needed to secure nomination):
Current delegate count:
Trump: 82
Cruz: 17
Rubio: 16
Kasich: 6
Carson: 4
7 p.m. EST:
Virginia: 49 delegates
Georgia: 76 delegates
Vermont: 16 delegates
8 p.m. EST:
Alabama: 50 delegates
Tennessee: 58 delegates
Massachusetts: 42 delegates
Oklahoma: 43 delegates
Minnesota (38 delegates) caucuses start at 8 p.m. EST
8:30 p.m. EST:
Arkansas: 40 delegates
9:00 p.m. EST:
Texas: 145 delegates
Midnight EST:
Alaska: 28 delegates
DEMOCRATS (865 delegates at stake; 2,383/4,131 needed to secure nomination):
Current delegate count:
Clinton: 546
Sanders: 87
American Samoa (6 delegates) caucuses start at 3 p.m. EST
7 p.m. EST:
Virginia: 95 delegates
Georgia: 102 delegates
Vermont: 16 delegates
8 p.m. EST:
Massachusetts: 91 delegates
Alabama: 53 delegates
Oklahoma: 38 delegates
Tennessee: 67 delegates
Minnesota: (77 delegates) caucuses start at 8 p.m. EST
8:30 p.m. EST:
Arkansas: 32 delegates
9 p.m. EST:
Texas: 222 delegates
Colorado (66 delegates) caucuses start at 9 p.m. EST