Super Tuesday 2016 results

There’s a certain point in every election cycle when pollsters stop using what’s called the “generic ballot” question — “Do you plan to vote for a Democrat or a Republican?” — and start asking about specific candidates.

Pollsters moved on months ago. But the rise of the #NeverTrump coalition — a marriage of convenience between Republican establishment types and conservative-movement professionals — brings its adherents right back there.

The results are in for all of the 12 states that voted on Super Tuesday.

Donald Trump won seven states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Virginia). Ted Cruz won three states (Alaska, Oklahoma, and Texas), and Marco Rubio won one state (Minnesota). On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won seven states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia) and Bernie Sanders won four states (Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Vermont).

Winning Oklahoma is not going to get Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination.

But Sanders surprised many observers in taking the Southern state by a 10-point margin on Tuesday night, suggesting for the first time that the Vermont senator’s coalition could extend beyond the Northeast.

One week ago, I wrote that “Donald Trump could get an effectively insurmountable delegate lead in just 21 days.”

After Super Tuesday, he appears on track to do just that, or something close to it.

Bernie Sanders has won Minnesota’s Democratic caucuses, according to multiple media reports.

Sanders definitely needed a win in Minnesota to keep his campaign alive, and he was expected to pull it off. The state’s heavily white, liberal Democratic electorate is very similar to the states where Sanders has been strongest: Iowa and New Hampshire. And Minnesota was one of the states the Sanders campaign focused its energies on in the days leading up to Super Tuesday.

Donald Trump is dominating the Republican primary, despite the fact that he’s the candidate Republican Party elites most fear. His most viable challenger is Ted Cruz, the candidate Republican Party elites most loathe. Behind them is John Kasich, whose hair-trigger temper, evident contempt for much of his party, and acceptance of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion have made him a candidate many Republicans simply don’t like.

And that’s...it. The Republican Party, which is a concept distinct from Republican voters, is caught between choices that range from disastrous to merely unpalatable. It’s so bad that some loyal Republicans — or at least some once-loyal Republicans — are seriously contemplating recruiting and backing a third-party candidate.

Sen. Ted Cruz made clear Tuesday night that the Republican Party needs to wake up and think of him as the candidate with the best chance of defeating Donald Trump.

After winning Texas and Oklahoma but losing several other states, Cruz gave a speech to supporters in which he tried to seize the anti-Trump mantle, repeatedly claiming that he had the best chance of taking down the Republican frontrunner.

Hillary Clinton won Massachusetts’s Democratic primary, according to multiple media reports — striking a blow in the heart of the Northeast, which has been Bernie Sanders’s power base.

Sanders definitely needed a win in Massachusetts to keep his campaign alive. The state’s heavily white, liberal Democratic electorate is very similar to the states where Sanders has been strongest: Iowa and New Hampshire. And Massachusetts was one of the states the Sanders campaign focused its energies on in the days leading up to Super Tuesday.

Bernie Sanders got a crucial victory on Super Tuesday, winning Oklahoma’s Democratic primary.

Oklahoma is actually one of the most important contests of the night for the Democratic primary race. It’s one of the few whose outcome was genuinely in question going into Super Tuesday. More importantly, it was an important test of whether Bernie Sanders’ early victory in New Hampshire (and his tying Hillary Clinton in Iowa) was indicative of a lasting appeal within the Democratic Party, at least among white voters.

Donald Trump may have romped on Super Tuesday, but Ted Cruz managed to win at least two victories — his home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, according to calls by multiple media outlets.

Shortly after polls closed in Texas, Cruz was declared the winner based on early returns and exit polling. Donald Trump took second, Marco Rubio third, and John Kasich and Ben Carson were far back in the single digits. The same order of candidates looked to be the case in Oklahoma, too.

Hillary Clinton has won Texas’s Democratic primary, according to projections from multiple media outlets.

Clinton was heavily favored to win Texas. The state’s Democratic electorate is dominated by black voters, who supported Clinton overwhelmingly in Nevada and South Carolina, and Latino voters, who have also favored Clinton (albeit by slimmer margins). She was ahead by 30 points in pre-primary polling, and the Sanders campaign didn’t put as much energy into campaigning there as it did in some of the other states up for grabs today.

Donald Trump has won the Virginia Republican primary. He’s won a state Marco Rubio hoped to win in the closing hours of voting, and where the Republican electorate has historically been wealthier and better-educated than elsewhere in the South.

In polls taken in the two weeks before the election, he was leading by double digits. But Virginia took far longer to call than other states voting Tuesday due to a strong performance by Rubio.

Hillary Clinton has won the Arkansas Democratic primary, according to projections from CNN.

Clinton was always expected to win Arkansas. It is basically her home state; she was its first lady. And it has a large population of African-American voters, among whom she’s done very well in the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary.

About 6 percent of voters in Virginia’s Republican primary were Democrats, according to a CNN exit poll.

That jibes with anecdotal evidence of Democrats voting in the opposite party’s primary strategically — though whether “strategically” translated into “for Donald Trump” (because they thought Trump would be easy to beat) or “against Donald Trump” (because they were horrified by the prospect of a Trump presidency) isn’t yet clear.

Bernie Sanders spent his Super Tuesday surrounded by friends and family in his home state, claiming a win in Vermont’s primary.

The senator gave his Vermont victory speech early in the night, before many of the results from the night’s primaries had come in.

Hillary Clinton just won Tennessee’s Democratic primary, according to multiple media outlet projections.

That is not good news for Bernie Sanders.

Donald Trump has won the Massachusetts primary, a call made early Tuesday night as polls closed.

Trump’s victory was expected. He’d been polling extraordinarily well in the state — late polls had him leading by double-digit margins.

Donald Trump has won the Tennessee primary, with the election called right as polls closed.

Tennessee wasn’t polled much going into Super Tuesday, but the sole poll of the state taken in February found Trump in the lead. So his victory isn’t a total surprise.

Hillary Clinton has won Alabama’s Democratic primary, according to projections from multiple news outlets.

Clinton was heavily favored to win Alabama. The state’s Democratic electorate is dominated by black voters — according to exit polls, 47 percent of primary voters were black. Black voters supported Clinton overwhelmingly in Nevada and South Carolina.

Hillary Clinton has won Georgia’s Democratic primary, according to projections from multiple media outlets.

Clinton was heavily favored to win Georgia. The state’s Democratic electorate is dominated by black voters who supported Clinton overwhelmingly in Nevada and South Carolina. She was ahead by over 30 points in pre-primary polling, and the Sanders campaign didn’t put as much energy into campaigning there as it did in some of the other states up for grabs today.

Bernie Sanders has won Vermont’s Democratic primary, according to projections from multiple media outlets.

Sanders was always expected to win Vermont. It is, after all, his home state. The state’s heavily white, liberal Democratic electorate is very similar to the states where Sanders has been strongest: Iowa and New Hampshire. So it makes sense that Vermont was one of the states the Sanders campaign focused its energies on in the days leading up to Super Tuesday.

MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki tweeted out this tidbit from the early exit polls, and it’s being interpreted around Twitter as good news for Hillary Clinton — which it may well be! But there’s no particular reason these preferences should lead to a Clinton victory:

Bernie Sanders has held elected office almost continuously since 1981, when he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont. It’s a bit hard to compare that with Clinton’s experience — she was clearly more involved in her husband’s various administrations than most first ladies are, so it’s misleading to say her experience only began when she was elected to the Senate in 2000 — but Sanders is arguably a more experienced politician than Clinton is, and he’s definitely a very experienced politician.