Cruz to GOP: It’s either me or Trump

“My mother told me one time”, Kasich shared, “she said, ‘Johnny, if you want to look for a really good friend, get somebody who’s Jewish'”.

Rubio said that when he called Trump to congratulate him on the New Hampshire win, he joked, “Why are you so greedy, did it have to be a landslide?”

It appears the idle threats were made just after the republican presidential candidate was declared victor of Tuesday’s primary.

Ohio Governor John Kasich’s uplifting and positive message of renewal catapulted him into second place, a potentially critical result for him as the Republican Party works out which mainstream candidate could successfully challenge Trump.

Trump, 69, who has campaigned to deport illegal immigrants and temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S., was in first place with 35 per cent of the vote on the Republican side based on 88 per cent of returns. He said, “There is magic in the air with this campaign”.

If Sanders were to win the nomination without winning a large percentage of superdelegates, he would need to defeat Clinton by 60-40 delegate margin in the remaining states.

Trump, on the other hand, didn’t falter in the Granite State as he had in Iowa.

The most Democratic areas of New Hampshire are in the state’s nonmetropolitan counties. “We’re going to win in South Carolina”, Trump said, looking down the campaign trail to the next stop. He then finished in a disappointing fifth place in New Hampshire Tuesday night.

But a strong showing in New Hampshire can give a candidate momentum ahead of state contests in coming weeks, including the March 1 “Super Tuesday”, when 11 states vote. They’re much better at picking losers than winners. Sanders, who so far has only a dozen or so superdelegate endorsements in total compared to hundreds for Clinton, got none of those bonus points out of Iowa.

Clinton said she recognized the American electorate’s fury with establishment politics.

The former president says “There’s no doubt in my mind that Jeb Bush will be a great commander-in-chief for our military”. All four are now headed to SC.

Superdelegate support is fluid, though, so some of those delegates now backing Clinton could switch to Sanders before the Democratic National Convention in late July.

Lost for the moment amid the shake-up in the second tier of the Republican race is the fact that Donald Trump dramatically consolidated his position as front-runner in the tangled race.

Cruz told the Mike Gallagher radio show today that “South Carolina is going to play a key role in choosing whether the Republican nominee is a proven conservative or simply a candidate who talks the talk on the trail but hasn’t walked the walk”.