Donald Trump takes control of Republican race

On the Democrat side Hillary Clinton still finds it hard to shake off self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders, another candidate whose party leaders believe is not electable – although he could win in a showdown with Trump and Michael Bloomberg standing as an independent.

On Saturday, Trump handily won in SC. Ted Cruz have tried to paint Rubio as a supporter of “amnesty” because of his work on a bipartisan reform bill that ultimately failed. Next week’s SC primary will be a test for Clinton, although her win here is nearly certain the big test will be the margin of her victory.

But many eyes will now be on Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who the Republican mainstream core will likely look to as their leading candidate now that Jeb Bush has quit. “I have a great family, I just really want to thank all of you”, he said.

“It’s every single day something comes out of the Cruz campaign that’s deceptive and untrue, and in this case goes after my faith”, Rubio told reporters when asked about the incident. Hillary Clinton was fundraising in northern California, while Sanders held a rally in MA, another Super Tuesday state.

Florida governor Jeb Bush received 7.8 percent of the vote and announced that he was going to drop out of the race.

Flake’s endorsement comes after Rubio finished second behind Trump in the SC primary on Saturday.

Polls show Trump with a huge lead in the Nevada caucuses, which would give the billionaire businessman a third-straight victory in the state-by-state contests to select delegates to the party’s national nominating convention. Trump’s performance could unnerve the Republican establishment, since SC has sided with the eventual nominee in every GOP presidential race since 1980, apart from 2012. “It’s handsome. When you win, it’s attractive”.

In his concession speech on Saturday, he insisted that Nevada, like New Hampshire, was a success given how much he had closed a large gap on Clinton and insisted the momentum was still with him. This means that even though the biggest delegate prize is Texas (Cruz’s home state), he will only get a share of Texas delegates even if he wins the primary there. Among South Carolina’s non-evangelical voters, Trump and Rubio raked in 30 and 22 percent of votes, respectively, while Cruz won over just 13 percent of the group.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson visits voters in a restaurant during the Republican presidential primary on February 20, 2016 in Spartanburg, South Carolina.