Rubio, Sanders make inroads in US primary, caucus polls

WASHINGTON

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Marco Rubio won separate primary races on Sunday, adding weight to their cases that they can compete with their party’s front-runners for the U.S. presidential nomination.

Sunday’s victory is the eighth for Sanders and second for Rubio who won his first contest on Super Tuesday. The Florida Senator was completely shut out during four polls on the previous day.

Rubio cleared the 50 percent threshold to collect all 23 delegates in Puerto Rico – an important victory as his campaign continues to struggle to gain momentum nationally.

So far, billionaire Donald Trump has the most victories amongst Republicans with 12. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is second with six, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich has yet to win a primary.

Cruz is progressively being seen as Trump’s main challenger, but with Sunday’s victory, Rubio’s campaign proved that it still has life.

That is critical ahead of March 15’s Florida primary where 99 delegates are up for grabs in the winner-take-all contest. It is a must-win for Rubio in order to remain viable.

For Sanders, his victory in Maine marked his third of the weekend, having won Nebraska and Kansas on Saturday.

He clashed fiercely with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton during a CNN debate in Flint, Michigan where a water crisis has prompted national outcry.

If he was president at the time of the crisis, Sanders said he would “fire anybody who knew about what was happening and did not act appropriately”.

“How did we have so much money available to go to war in Iraq, and spent trillions of dollars, but somehow not have enough money, not just for Flint,” he said, “there are communities all over this country.”

He and Clinton called on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to step down from office – a first for Clinton, but a repeated call from her challenger following a water crisis where residents complained for over a year of dirty-looking and foul smelling water only to discover that corroded pipes had been leaking lead into their water supply.

There are 147 Democratic and 59 Republican delegates at stake in Michigan during Tuesday's polls when Mississippi, Hawaii and Idaho will also open voting.