And then there were 3...We'll bring you all of #SuperTuesday's results. Joining the show today is Donald J. Trump along with David Plouffe, and Carly Fiorina! Joe and Mika report and discuss last night's GOP contests. 'It was a clean sweep' Marco Rubio is knocked out of race, after losing his home state. The panel discusses Marco Rubio’s second place finish in Florida, concluding that he was not able to compete with the “blocking and tackling” political game. They also consider his political future and whether he can recover from his home state loss. Ted Cruz is officially the establishment candidate. It was a huge night for (Donald) Trump even though at his press conference after he won big, you would never know it. It almost seemed like he lost while he complains about the press, etc. And, Hillary (Clinton) also had a huge night. Winning Ohio when B ernie said that he would win was very huge for her.
Super Tuesday 3: Big wins for Trump, Kasich, Clinton; Rubio drops out. Clinton campaign defends Libya comment in face of RNC attacks
Clinton said that by the end of the night, she would have two million more votes than Sanders, and hold a lead of more than 300 in the delegate count. While Clinton did not urge Sanders to quit the race so she could turn her fire on Trump, her comments appeared to be a gentle message to her stronger-than-expected challenger.
Clinton's victory in Ohio follows her surprise loss in Michigan last week, which raised fresh questions about her campaign strategy and provided a lift to Sanders that he hoped would help him sweep the Midwest. That loss may ultimately turn out to be an anomaly given her wins in Illinois and Ohio.
She unveiled a retooled message in her victory speech that simultaneously rationalized her campaign against Sanders and foreshadowed a general election duel with Trump, as she stressed repeatedly she would create jobs as president and stand up for the middle class.
"We are going to stand up for American workers and make sure no one takes advantage of us -- not China, not Wall Street, not overpaid corporate executives," she said.
Clinton's victories on Tuesday give Sanders a tough climb if he is to grab the nomination.
He would need to win about 72% of the remaining delegates in order to do so, according to CNN estimates, and time may be running out for him unless he can start racking up huge victory margins in coming state contests. Still, most Democratic strategists expect Sanders to stay in the race for several months.
Rubio drops out
With Rubio's decision to drop out, three Republican candidates remain in the White House race -- Trump, Kasich and Cruz.
In a speech that served as a thinly-veiled rebuke of Trump's campaign tactics, Rubio warned that the politics of division will leave America a "fractured nation."
"America is in the middle of a real political storm, a real tsunami and we should have seen this coming," Rubio said. "While we are on the right side," he said, "this year, we will not be on the winning side."
Rubio spent the final weeks of his campaign in an often bitter fight with Trump. But on Tuesday night, Trump congratulated the Florida senator "for having run a tough campaign."
"He is tough," Trump said. "He is smart and he has got a great future."
Cruz also praised Rubio warmly, saying he could "paint a picture and weave a tapestry about the promise of America like nobody else."
Ted Cruz urged to apologize for attacks against Mitch McConnell
And Cruz told Rubio's bereft supporters: "We welcome you with open arms."
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won pivotal primaries Tuesday, while Gov. John Kasich's long-awaited debut victory in his home state of Ohio raised the chances of a historic GOP convention fight.
A humiliating loss on home ground in Florida, meanwhile, ended the White House dreams of Sen. Marco Rubio, who was once hailed as a Republican Party savior.
Clinton took big strides toward the Democratic nomination by winning Florida and North Carolina. And in crucial victories, she stopped Bernie Sanders in his tracks in the industrial Midwest by taking Ohio and Illinois.
The Republican Party, meanwhile, veered closer to a contested convention after Kasich held his own state and deprived Trump of its 66 delegates. That makes it more difficult for the billionaire to reach the 1,237 delegates he needs to capture the GOP prize.
Trump did, however, prevail in the biggest contest of the night, taking all of Florida's 99 delegates. That resounding win helped force Rubio out of the race after failing to win his own state and unite the Republican establishment against Trump. The real estate tycoon also won primaries in Illinois and North Carolina.
"This was a great evening," he said. "This was an amazing evening."
Jerry Springer: Donald Trump was 'inevitable'
The drama is still unfolding in other key races. Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are locked in a tight battle for Missouri. And Clinton is still hoping for a sweep, with votes still being counted in the close race with Sanders in Missouri.
Vote counting was completed for the night in Missouri with both Clinton and Trump clinging to tight leads of less than half a percentage point, but CNN will not project a winner in either contest as the margin of victory in each case is less than 1 percentage point.
Trump was already looking forward to the general election as he urged party unity amid growing speculation about the potential for a convention fight.
"We have to bring our party together," he said. "We have to bring it together."
Still, GOP leaders may now look to Kasich as their final chance to unite behind a candidate who could challenge Trump in the event of a contested convention.
"We are all very, very happy," Kasich told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in a telephone interview.
According to CNN estimates, Trump needs to win about 60% of the remaining delegates available in the GOP race -- a goal complicated by the fact that some states award delegates on a proportional basis, rather than doling out their entire hauls to the winner, as is the case in Ohio and Florida.
But it's unclear how Kasich, a contender who has won only one state and who has been laboring in obscurity for much of the race, can overtake Trump, who has now won 18 states and is far ahead in the delegate race.
The billionaire, who has harnessed the anger of grass-roots Republicans against party elites, is responsible for destroying the campaigns of some of the GOP's most imposing personalities -- all of whom were once considered strong White House contenders, including Rubio, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie.
Democrats battle it out
On the Democratic side, Clinton has won the Illinois, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio primaries -- crucial victories that bolster Clinton's claim that she is her party's only candidate who can win diverse states that will be pivotal in the November general election.
Her win in North Carolina completed her sweep of Southern states, where she has enjoyed strong support from African-American voters.
"We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November," Clinton said in a victory speech in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Marco Rubio drops out of presidential campaign after Florida loss. Marco Rubio is dropping out of the presidential race after losing the Florida primary to Donald Trump and failing to unite the Republican establishment against the billionaire front-runner.
"We live in a republic and our voters make these decisions," Rubio said in Miami Tuesday night as his supporters booed Trump's victory.
His speech was a thinly veiled rebuke of Trump's campaign tactics, as he warned that it would have been easier for him to exploit the anger and anxiety driving the race. He warned that the politics of division were going to leave America a "fractured nation."
"America is in the middle of a real political storm, a real tsunami and we should have seen this coming," Rubio said.
"While we are on the right side," he said," this year, we will not be on the winning side."
Rubio, the 44-year-old first-term senator, had positioned himself as the only person who could stop Trump, and had gone on the attack, memorably bringing up the size of the Trump's hands during a campaign rally and at a presidential debate.
His campaign slogan was "a new American century" -- as he tried to send the message that America needed a new generation of leadership that could deal with the challenges ahead. It was also a way to spin his relative youth, and short time in the U.S. Senate as an advantage.
He drew heavily from his life story on the trail. The child of Cuban immigrants, Rubio's parents worked menial jobs like bartending and hotel cleaning to provide for their children. His stump speech drove home the message that Americans should leave their children better off than they were, and warned that dream was slipping away.
After not winning any of the early contests, Rubio's advisers and donors banked on him consolidating the establishment vote -- particularly after Jeb Bush quit the race -- and winning in big states like his home of Florida.
Meanwhile, Trump continued to lead the pack and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz became the second favorite, picking up the first contest of Iowa and far more states than Rubio along the way.
Rubio tried several tactics to deal with Trump. At first, he mostly ignored the front-runner, aiming his fire instead for his closest competitors for the nomination like Cruz and Bush.
But as Trump continued to roll, Rubio made a sudden strategy change at the GOP debate in late February in Houston. That night and in successive days, Rubio unleashed a torrent of opposition research combined with schoolyard insults, suddenly mentioning Trump by name and hand size in his stump speeches.
Trump responded in kind, making a crude joke about his penis size at a following debate, and seemed to get the better of the tiff against "Little Rubio," who lost momentum rather than gain it after the attacks.
Rubio's other major stumble came much earlier in the campaign, in the first primary on the calendar. At the New Hampshire debate before the Granite State's contest, Rubio fell into his habit of repeating his one-liners, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie mocked him brutally for doing so. The widely panned debate performance was followed by a dismal fifth place finish in that early primary, only made worse by establishment rival Ohio Gov. John Kasich's surprise second place placement.
The Cuban-American did get his mojo back, though, nabbing the highly sought-after endorsement of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to best Cruz for second in that state and Nevada.
And after Bush's departure from the race, a slew of establishment Republicans ran to endorse Rubio, including Haley being joined by the sitting governors of Kansas, Arkansas, Tennessee and New Mexico.
Rubio lost every one of those states, except New Mexico, which has yet to vote.
The campaign has blamed other candidates for some of their troubles, including singling out Kasich as a spoiler. Kasich's share of the vote especially stung in Virginia on Super Tuesday, where Rubio came within 3 percentage points of beating Trump.
But despite his campaign's argument that an establishment candidate could win if the slate of candidates would just narrow, anti-establishment candidates Trump and Cruz only picked up steam in the wake of Rubio's endorsement avalanche, as Rubio fell back to third and fourth place in races.
His last stand came down to his home state of Florida, which was called for Trump as soon as polls closed at 8 p.m.
The attack ads played more than 4,000 times on local broadcast stations and national cable channels, according to Kantar Media's estimates. Just one day's worth of saturation messaging cost the anti-Trump groups $5.9 million.
The spending gives a big boost to local TV stations and their cash-strapped newsrooms.
Will it give a boost to Trump's rivals, too? Or did it come too late?
When the election results come in on Tuesday night, political pros will be looking for signs of the ad war's success or failure.
In light of Trump's electoral success, largely through unpaid press coverage rather than paid ads, strategists have been debating the effectiveness of old-fashioned TV ad campaigns.
But at this point in the primary process, Trump has been buying airtime too -- $4.7 million worth in the five states where voters are going to the polls on Tuesday.
His opponents have been spending a whole lot more.
Conservative Solutions PAC, which supports Marco Rubio, has spent $13.1 million on ads in the five states. The American Future Fund, which supports John Kasich, has spent $6.2 million.
"It's wall-to-wall TV ads" in Ohio, Henry Gomez, the chief political reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, said on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." "This morning, as I watching local news, I don't think I saw a nonpolitical ad among them."
It's not just the GOP: Gomez noted that viewers are being "inundated" with ads for and against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, too.
In Ohio, in fact, the Sanders campaign spent $2.5 million and the Clinton campaign spent $1.9 million in the week that began March 9.
Trump spent $1.2 million, while his principal rival in the state, John Kasich, spent $750.000.
Most of the stop-Trump spending has been coming from conservative super PACs like Our Principles PAC, which produced a buzzworthy ad showing women reading things Trump has said about women.
The ad, released on Monday, has received a huge amount of press attention on top of the $500,000 the group says it is spending to air it on cable.
Our Principles PAC produced a buzzworthy ad showing women reading things Trump has said about women.
Kantar's data shows that spending on anti-Trump ads has steadily increased in the past month. It surged at the beginning of March after Trump won pivotal victories in the first Super Tuesday set of primaries.
"On March 2, the lightbulbs went on," Elizabeth Wilner, the senior vice president of Kantar Media Ad Intelligence, said.
During the first week of February, 9% of GOP-related campaign spots qualified as "anti-Trump" spots, according to Kantar's analysis. During the first week of March, 47% were "anti-Trump."
The week before the March 1 primary, $7 million was spent on anti-Trump messaging. The week after, $12.8 million was spent.
Not surprisingly, the sheer number of ads on TV have increased. The ads are a predictable boon for TV stations in states with competitive primaries. To a lesser extent, the ad spending also benefits the operators of local cable channel systems and the owners of national cable channels.
Hillary slams the door on Bernie. Ohio was the wild card win that allows Clinton to shift her gaze forward.
The 2016 Democratic primary effectively ended Tuesday night, with Hillary Clinton as the all-but-certain winner but Bernie Sanders barely acknowledging it.
For Clinton, a narrow win in Illinois and double-digit victories across the battleground states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio provided deliverance from a humbling loss in Michigan a week earlier and finally gave her the space to begin her pivot to Donald Trump and the general election. That left the Vermont senator to deliver his standard 60-minute stemwinder in Phoenix without mentioning a single defeat.
After noting that she now has a 300-delegate lead – which will make it essentially impossible for Sanders to catch up given the rules of the Democratic process -- Clinton turned her attention to the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
“Our commander-in-chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it,” she told her energetic supporters.
“When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States,” Clinton said, discussing Trump’s most outrageous policies, “when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong, it makes him wrong.”
With Trump sweeping Florida and knocking Marco Rubio out of the race, Clinton also highlighted the heightened stakes for Democrats, noting that “tonight, it’s clearer than ever that this may be one of the most consequential campaigns of our lifetimes.”
That doesn’t mean Sanders -- fueled by a money machine that never stalls -- will fade into the ether any time soon. The calendar now turns to a string of overwhelmingly white, caucus states like Idaho, Utah, Washington, and Alaska, where he is favored to collect the small piles of delegates available -- 244 delegates in total, counting Hawaii on March 26.
“It’s amazing, he’s a cash machine,” marveled a Clinton insider. “If he loses, he says, ‘big bad Hillary is winning.’ Boom, $5 million. If he wins, it’s like, ‘keep the revolution going!’ Boom, $5 million. We got 1.5 million more votes. But either way, he gets $5 million.”
Clinton on Tuesday night crushed Sanders in Florida -- where there are more eligible voters in South Florida than in all four early nominating states combined -- with a 31-point victory. And she won North Carolina by a hefty 16-point margin, despite a $1 million Sanders ad blitz over the past week that tripled her spending there.
Clinton allies were quick to declare the race over.
"Hillary Clinton's wins tonight effectively ended the Democratic nomination for president,” said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Correct the Record. “It is all but mathematically impossible for Bernie Sanders to overtake her lead. Her message is resonating and hers is the real revolution--a revolution that will break down barriers and that will get things done for the American people."
But if Florida was a bonanza that widened the delegate gap between them, Ohio was the wild card win that allowed Clinton to shift her gaze forward -- her 13-point victory represented a staggering blow to Sanders, who was not able to translate his economic message and opposition to foreign trade deals into success in Ohio and Illinois. In the other industrial Midwestern states to vote Tuesday, Clinton held a slight lead in Missouri with 99 percent of the vote in.
The Clintons had deeper roots in Ohio, which the Democratic frontrunner won eight years ago, and had more union backing there than she did in Michigan. That contributed to big wins across the state -- she won early voters by over 40 points in Cleveland; by almost 30 in Columbus; by almost 40 in Cincinnati; and by over 40 in Dayton, a Clinton campaign aide said, crediting campaign manager Robby Mook’s game plan for the resounding win.
Even as Clinton all-but-announced the next phase of her campaign Tuesday night, campaign operatives said they would continue to fight hard in the Arizona primary March 22, in order to break up Sanders’ expected string of caucus state wins that could follow.
While Sanders booked $1.7 million in ads the week before the Arizona primary, Clinton’s campaign Tuesday night released its first Spanish-language ad, which draws a direct contrast with Trump. Arizona is where the campaign expects to begin ramping up and spending money beginning Wednesday.
If there's one deficit left for the campaign to address, it's cash. Clinton acknowledged as much Tuesday night, imploring her supporters to “join the 950,000 supporters who already have contributed, most less than $100” and guiding them to her website to donate. The campaign followed up with a text signed "H" from Hillary, telling supporters: “If you knocked on doors, talked to friends, pitched in, or voted -- tonight is your victory. Now, let’s bring it home. Chip in $1 to say you’re with me.”
But in reality, unless Sanders is able to defy all odds by defeating Clinton in places like California and New York by landslide margins, his path to the nomination is now essentially blocked.
Even progressive leaders acknowledged as much Tuesday, lauding Sanders for moving Clinton to the left in the primary rather than talking up his chances of actually winning it.
“Clinton has engaged Bernie Sanders in a race to the top on key issues like expanding Social Security instead of cutting it, breaking up Too Big To Fail banks, jailing Wall Street executives who break the law, and debt-free college,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “That was almost unimaginable a year ago.”
Now Clinton confronts a narrowing Republican field that her aides said can only benefit her. “What she offers in terms of her strength as commander in chief, [her promise] to make America whole again, as she says…that’s a good choice for us,” communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters before the polls closed. “For the choice to be clearer, we think that is to our benefit.”
Speaking to reporters briefly outside a polling location in North Carolina Tuesday afternoon, Clinton expressed confidence about her a match-up against Trump.
“He’s gotten a minority -- perhaps a plurality but a minority -- of those who chose to vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses,” Clinton said. “I’ve gotten more votes than he has already. I don’t think he represents the vast majority of Americans, who are more interested in solving our problems than venting our disappointments.”
With a decisive win in a key November battleground, the Clinton campaign got off to a good start. Of the states that voted Tuesday, Florida was the biggest delegate prize and the state where the Clinton campaign has been building a grassroots volunteer base the longest. Florida native and longtime Clinton aide Craig Smith -- the very first hire of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign -- has been working for the campaign organizing volunteers here since last fall.
Sanders, in contrast, didn’t visit the state until last week, but then he did more than just dip his toe in. He went up on television in Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville and held big rallies in Miami, Gainesville and Orlando. But he was a late arrival in a state with extensive early voting; by the time he got on the air, about 750,000 Democrats had already cast their ballots, Florida Democrats said.
“Sen. Sanders wanted to play big here, and I think that the fact that his numbers are not moving is more of a testament to his lack of ability to put together a diverse coalition in a big state like Florida,” said Ashley Walker, Obama’s 2012 Florida state director.
Florida Democrats credited the big win to the state’s diverse population, as well as the deep connection the Clintons have with the state. Bill Clinton campaigned relentlessly in Florida for President Obama in 2012.
“They’ve been down here tirelessly every election cycle,” said Walker. “They’re familiar faces down here for the average voter.” And part of Sanders appeal in other states -- his laser focus on economic inequality -- hurt him in an ethnically and geographically diverse state. “Our state is really eight or nine different states,” said Walker. “Clinton’s work on such a broad range of issues put her in a good position to garner support with all the different groups.”
Clinton said that by the end of the night, she would have two million more votes than Sanders, and hold a lead of more than 300 in the delegate count. While Clinton did not urge Sanders to quit the race so she could turn her fire on Trump, her comments appeared to be a gentle message to her stronger-than-expected challenger.
Clinton's victory in Ohio follows her surprise loss in Michigan last week, which raised fresh questions about her campaign strategy and provided a lift to Sanders that he hoped would help him sweep the Midwest. That loss may ultimately turn out to be an anomaly given her wins in Illinois and Ohio.
She unveiled a retooled message in her victory speech that simultaneously rationalized her campaign against Sanders and foreshadowed a general election duel with Trump, as she stressed repeatedly she would create jobs as president and stand up for the middle class.
"We are going to stand up for American workers and make sure no one takes advantage of us -- not China, not Wall Street, not overpaid corporate executives," she said.
Clinton's victories on Tuesday give Sanders a tough climb if he is to grab the nomination.
He would need to win about 72% of the remaining delegates in order to do so, according to CNN estimates, and time may be running out for him unless he can start racking up huge victory margins in coming state contests. Still, most Democratic strategists expect Sanders to stay in the race for several months.
Rubio drops out
With Rubio's decision to drop out, three Republican candidates remain in the White House race -- Trump, Kasich and Cruz.
In a speech that served as a thinly-veiled rebuke of Trump's campaign tactics, Rubio warned that the politics of division will leave America a "fractured nation."
"America is in the middle of a real political storm, a real tsunami and we should have seen this coming," Rubio said. "While we are on the right side," he said, "this year, we will not be on the winning side."
Rubio spent the final weeks of his campaign in an often bitter fight with Trump. But on Tuesday night, Trump congratulated the Florida senator "for having run a tough campaign."
"He is tough," Trump said. "He is smart and he has got a great future."
Cruz also praised Rubio warmly, saying he could "paint a picture and weave a tapestry about the promise of America like nobody else."
Ted Cruz urged to apologize for attacks against Mitch McConnell
And Cruz told Rubio's bereft supporters: "We welcome you with open arms."
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won pivotal primaries Tuesday, while Gov. John Kasich's long-awaited debut victory in his home state of Ohio raised the chances of a historic GOP convention fight.
A humiliating loss on home ground in Florida, meanwhile, ended the White House dreams of Sen. Marco Rubio, who was once hailed as a Republican Party savior.
Clinton took big strides toward the Democratic nomination by winning Florida and North Carolina. And in crucial victories, she stopped Bernie Sanders in his tracks in the industrial Midwest by taking Ohio and Illinois.
The Republican Party, meanwhile, veered closer to a contested convention after Kasich held his own state and deprived Trump of its 66 delegates. That makes it more difficult for the billionaire to reach the 1,237 delegates he needs to capture the GOP prize.
Trump did, however, prevail in the biggest contest of the night, taking all of Florida's 99 delegates. That resounding win helped force Rubio out of the race after failing to win his own state and unite the Republican establishment against Trump. The real estate tycoon also won primaries in Illinois and North Carolina.
"This was a great evening," he said. "This was an amazing evening."
Jerry Springer: Donald Trump was 'inevitable'
The drama is still unfolding in other key races. Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are locked in a tight battle for Missouri. And Clinton is still hoping for a sweep, with votes still being counted in the close race with Sanders in Missouri.
Vote counting was completed for the night in Missouri with both Clinton and Trump clinging to tight leads of less than half a percentage point, but CNN will not project a winner in either contest as the margin of victory in each case is less than 1 percentage point.
Trump was already looking forward to the general election as he urged party unity amid growing speculation about the potential for a convention fight.
"We have to bring our party together," he said. "We have to bring it together."
Still, GOP leaders may now look to Kasich as their final chance to unite behind a candidate who could challenge Trump in the event of a contested convention.
"We are all very, very happy," Kasich told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in a telephone interview.
According to CNN estimates, Trump needs to win about 60% of the remaining delegates available in the GOP race -- a goal complicated by the fact that some states award delegates on a proportional basis, rather than doling out their entire hauls to the winner, as is the case in Ohio and Florida.
But it's unclear how Kasich, a contender who has won only one state and who has been laboring in obscurity for much of the race, can overtake Trump, who has now won 18 states and is far ahead in the delegate race.
The billionaire, who has harnessed the anger of grass-roots Republicans against party elites, is responsible for destroying the campaigns of some of the GOP's most imposing personalities -- all of whom were once considered strong White House contenders, including Rubio, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie.
Democrats battle it out
On the Democratic side, Clinton has won the Illinois, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio primaries -- crucial victories that bolster Clinton's claim that she is her party's only candidate who can win diverse states that will be pivotal in the November general election.
Her win in North Carolina completed her sweep of Southern states, where she has enjoyed strong support from African-American voters.
"We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November," Clinton said in a victory speech in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Marco Rubio drops out of presidential campaign after Florida loss. Marco Rubio is dropping out of the presidential race after losing the Florida primary to Donald Trump and failing to unite the Republican establishment against the billionaire front-runner.
"We live in a republic and our voters make these decisions," Rubio said in Miami Tuesday night as his supporters booed Trump's victory.
His speech was a thinly veiled rebuke of Trump's campaign tactics, as he warned that it would have been easier for him to exploit the anger and anxiety driving the race. He warned that the politics of division were going to leave America a "fractured nation."
"America is in the middle of a real political storm, a real tsunami and we should have seen this coming," Rubio said.
"While we are on the right side," he said," this year, we will not be on the winning side."
Rubio, the 44-year-old first-term senator, had positioned himself as the only person who could stop Trump, and had gone on the attack, memorably bringing up the size of the Trump's hands during a campaign rally and at a presidential debate.
His campaign slogan was "a new American century" -- as he tried to send the message that America needed a new generation of leadership that could deal with the challenges ahead. It was also a way to spin his relative youth, and short time in the U.S. Senate as an advantage.
He drew heavily from his life story on the trail. The child of Cuban immigrants, Rubio's parents worked menial jobs like bartending and hotel cleaning to provide for their children. His stump speech drove home the message that Americans should leave their children better off than they were, and warned that dream was slipping away.
After not winning any of the early contests, Rubio's advisers and donors banked on him consolidating the establishment vote -- particularly after Jeb Bush quit the race -- and winning in big states like his home of Florida.
Meanwhile, Trump continued to lead the pack and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz became the second favorite, picking up the first contest of Iowa and far more states than Rubio along the way.
Rubio tried several tactics to deal with Trump. At first, he mostly ignored the front-runner, aiming his fire instead for his closest competitors for the nomination like Cruz and Bush.
But as Trump continued to roll, Rubio made a sudden strategy change at the GOP debate in late February in Houston. That night and in successive days, Rubio unleashed a torrent of opposition research combined with schoolyard insults, suddenly mentioning Trump by name and hand size in his stump speeches.
Trump responded in kind, making a crude joke about his penis size at a following debate, and seemed to get the better of the tiff against "Little Rubio," who lost momentum rather than gain it after the attacks.
Rubio's other major stumble came much earlier in the campaign, in the first primary on the calendar. At the New Hampshire debate before the Granite State's contest, Rubio fell into his habit of repeating his one-liners, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie mocked him brutally for doing so. The widely panned debate performance was followed by a dismal fifth place finish in that early primary, only made worse by establishment rival Ohio Gov. John Kasich's surprise second place placement.
The Cuban-American did get his mojo back, though, nabbing the highly sought-after endorsement of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to best Cruz for second in that state and Nevada.
And after Bush's departure from the race, a slew of establishment Republicans ran to endorse Rubio, including Haley being joined by the sitting governors of Kansas, Arkansas, Tennessee and New Mexico.
Rubio lost every one of those states, except New Mexico, which has yet to vote.
The campaign has blamed other candidates for some of their troubles, including singling out Kasich as a spoiler. Kasich's share of the vote especially stung in Virginia on Super Tuesday, where Rubio came within 3 percentage points of beating Trump.
But despite his campaign's argument that an establishment candidate could win if the slate of candidates would just narrow, anti-establishment candidates Trump and Cruz only picked up steam in the wake of Rubio's endorsement avalanche, as Rubio fell back to third and fourth place in races.
His last stand came down to his home state of Florida, which was called for Trump as soon as polls closed at 8 p.m.
Democratic Delegate results
2,383 needed for nomination · 2,404 available
Pledged delegates are based on state primary results, while superdelegates can support any candidate. Delegate results aren't final until the convention in July.
Stop-Trump groups spend millions on ads. But is it too late? On the day before Super Tuesday, more than half of all the GOP-related campaign ads on TV were anti-Donald Trump ads.The attack ads played more than 4,000 times on local broadcast stations and national cable channels, according to Kantar Media's estimates. Just one day's worth of saturation messaging cost the anti-Trump groups $5.9 million.
The spending gives a big boost to local TV stations and their cash-strapped newsrooms.
Will it give a boost to Trump's rivals, too? Or did it come too late?
When the election results come in on Tuesday night, political pros will be looking for signs of the ad war's success or failure.
In light of Trump's electoral success, largely through unpaid press coverage rather than paid ads, strategists have been debating the effectiveness of old-fashioned TV ad campaigns.
But at this point in the primary process, Trump has been buying airtime too -- $4.7 million worth in the five states where voters are going to the polls on Tuesday.
His opponents have been spending a whole lot more.
Conservative Solutions PAC, which supports Marco Rubio, has spent $13.1 million on ads in the five states. The American Future Fund, which supports John Kasich, has spent $6.2 million.
"It's wall-to-wall TV ads" in Ohio, Henry Gomez, the chief political reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, said on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." "This morning, as I watching local news, I don't think I saw a nonpolitical ad among them."
It's not just the GOP: Gomez noted that viewers are being "inundated" with ads for and against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, too.
In Ohio, in fact, the Sanders campaign spent $2.5 million and the Clinton campaign spent $1.9 million in the week that began March 9.
Trump spent $1.2 million, while his principal rival in the state, John Kasich, spent $750.000.
Most of the stop-Trump spending has been coming from conservative super PACs like Our Principles PAC, which produced a buzzworthy ad showing women reading things Trump has said about women.
The ad, released on Monday, has received a huge amount of press attention on top of the $500,000 the group says it is spending to air it on cable.
Kantar's data shows that spending on anti-Trump ads has steadily increased in the past month. It surged at the beginning of March after Trump won pivotal victories in the first Super Tuesday set of primaries.
"On March 2, the lightbulbs went on," Elizabeth Wilner, the senior vice president of Kantar Media Ad Intelligence, said.
During the first week of February, 9% of GOP-related campaign spots qualified as "anti-Trump" spots, according to Kantar's analysis. During the first week of March, 47% were "anti-Trump."
The week before the March 1 primary, $7 million was spent on anti-Trump messaging. The week after, $12.8 million was spent.
Not surprisingly, the sheer number of ads on TV have increased. The ads are a predictable boon for TV stations in states with competitive primaries. To a lesser extent, the ad spending also benefits the operators of local cable channel systems and the owners of national cable channels.
For Clinton, a narrow win in Illinois and double-digit victories across the battleground states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio provided deliverance from a humbling loss in Michigan a week earlier and finally gave her the space to begin her pivot to Donald Trump and the general election. That left the Vermont senator to deliver his standard 60-minute stemwinder in Phoenix without mentioning a single defeat.
After noting that she now has a 300-delegate lead – which will make it essentially impossible for Sanders to catch up given the rules of the Democratic process -- Clinton turned her attention to the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
“Our commander-in-chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it,” she told her energetic supporters.
“When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States,” Clinton said, discussing Trump’s most outrageous policies, “when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong, it makes him wrong.”
With Trump sweeping Florida and knocking Marco Rubio out of the race, Clinton also highlighted the heightened stakes for Democrats, noting that “tonight, it’s clearer than ever that this may be one of the most consequential campaigns of our lifetimes.”
That doesn’t mean Sanders -- fueled by a money machine that never stalls -- will fade into the ether any time soon. The calendar now turns to a string of overwhelmingly white, caucus states like Idaho, Utah, Washington, and Alaska, where he is favored to collect the small piles of delegates available -- 244 delegates in total, counting Hawaii on March 26.
“It’s amazing, he’s a cash machine,” marveled a Clinton insider. “If he loses, he says, ‘big bad Hillary is winning.’ Boom, $5 million. If he wins, it’s like, ‘keep the revolution going!’ Boom, $5 million. We got 1.5 million more votes. But either way, he gets $5 million.”
Clinton on Tuesday night crushed Sanders in Florida -- where there are more eligible voters in South Florida than in all four early nominating states combined -- with a 31-point victory. And she won North Carolina by a hefty 16-point margin, despite a $1 million Sanders ad blitz over the past week that tripled her spending there.
Clinton allies were quick to declare the race over.
"Hillary Clinton's wins tonight effectively ended the Democratic nomination for president,” said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Correct the Record. “It is all but mathematically impossible for Bernie Sanders to overtake her lead. Her message is resonating and hers is the real revolution--a revolution that will break down barriers and that will get things done for the American people."
But if Florida was a bonanza that widened the delegate gap between them, Ohio was the wild card win that allowed Clinton to shift her gaze forward -- her 13-point victory represented a staggering blow to Sanders, who was not able to translate his economic message and opposition to foreign trade deals into success in Ohio and Illinois. In the other industrial Midwestern states to vote Tuesday, Clinton held a slight lead in Missouri with 99 percent of the vote in.
The Clintons had deeper roots in Ohio, which the Democratic frontrunner won eight years ago, and had more union backing there than she did in Michigan. That contributed to big wins across the state -- she won early voters by over 40 points in Cleveland; by almost 30 in Columbus; by almost 40 in Cincinnati; and by over 40 in Dayton, a Clinton campaign aide said, crediting campaign manager Robby Mook’s game plan for the resounding win.
Even as Clinton all-but-announced the next phase of her campaign Tuesday night, campaign operatives said they would continue to fight hard in the Arizona primary March 22, in order to break up Sanders’ expected string of caucus state wins that could follow.
While Sanders booked $1.7 million in ads the week before the Arizona primary, Clinton’s campaign Tuesday night released its first Spanish-language ad, which draws a direct contrast with Trump. Arizona is where the campaign expects to begin ramping up and spending money beginning Wednesday.
If there's one deficit left for the campaign to address, it's cash. Clinton acknowledged as much Tuesday night, imploring her supporters to “join the 950,000 supporters who already have contributed, most less than $100” and guiding them to her website to donate. The campaign followed up with a text signed "H" from Hillary, telling supporters: “If you knocked on doors, talked to friends, pitched in, or voted -- tonight is your victory. Now, let’s bring it home. Chip in $1 to say you’re with me.”
But in reality, unless Sanders is able to defy all odds by defeating Clinton in places like California and New York by landslide margins, his path to the nomination is now essentially blocked.
Even progressive leaders acknowledged as much Tuesday, lauding Sanders for moving Clinton to the left in the primary rather than talking up his chances of actually winning it.
“Clinton has engaged Bernie Sanders in a race to the top on key issues like expanding Social Security instead of cutting it, breaking up Too Big To Fail banks, jailing Wall Street executives who break the law, and debt-free college,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “That was almost unimaginable a year ago.”
Now Clinton confronts a narrowing Republican field that her aides said can only benefit her. “What she offers in terms of her strength as commander in chief, [her promise] to make America whole again, as she says…that’s a good choice for us,” communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters before the polls closed. “For the choice to be clearer, we think that is to our benefit.”
Speaking to reporters briefly outside a polling location in North Carolina Tuesday afternoon, Clinton expressed confidence about her a match-up against Trump.
“He’s gotten a minority -- perhaps a plurality but a minority -- of those who chose to vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses,” Clinton said. “I’ve gotten more votes than he has already. I don’t think he represents the vast majority of Americans, who are more interested in solving our problems than venting our disappointments.”
With a decisive win in a key November battleground, the Clinton campaign got off to a good start. Of the states that voted Tuesday, Florida was the biggest delegate prize and the state where the Clinton campaign has been building a grassroots volunteer base the longest. Florida native and longtime Clinton aide Craig Smith -- the very first hire of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign -- has been working for the campaign organizing volunteers here since last fall.
Sanders, in contrast, didn’t visit the state until last week, but then he did more than just dip his toe in. He went up on television in Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville and held big rallies in Miami, Gainesville and Orlando. But he was a late arrival in a state with extensive early voting; by the time he got on the air, about 750,000 Democrats had already cast their ballots, Florida Democrats said.
“Sen. Sanders wanted to play big here, and I think that the fact that his numbers are not moving is more of a testament to his lack of ability to put together a diverse coalition in a big state like Florida,” said Ashley Walker, Obama’s 2012 Florida state director.
Florida Democrats credited the big win to the state’s diverse population, as well as the deep connection the Clintons have with the state. Bill Clinton campaigned relentlessly in Florida for President Obama in 2012.
“They’ve been down here tirelessly every election cycle,” said Walker. “They’re familiar faces down here for the average voter.” And part of Sanders appeal in other states -- his laser focus on economic inequality -- hurt him in an ethnically and geographically diverse state. “Our state is really eight or nine different states,” said Walker. “Clinton’s work on such a broad range of issues put her in a good position to garner support with all the different groups.”
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