Ted Cruz suspended his US presidential campaign on Tuesday after a crushing defeat in Indiana’s primary, leaving the way clear for Donald Trump to become the Republican nominee. 
 
 The Texas senator was the last remaining competitor to Trump with a clear shot at the nomination. However, after staking his campaign on a win in Indiana, Cruz suffered an overwhelming loss in the Hoosier State. 
 
 In an inclusive victory speech in which he tried to heal some of the open wounds of the past year and begin the long and very difficult process of unifying the party, Trump had kind words for his vanquished rival. 
 
 “I don’t know if he likes me or doesn’t like me,” Trump said. “But he is one hell of a competitor. He has an amazing future.” 
 
 In the Democratic race, Bernie Sanders pulled off a shock victory, beating Hillary Clinton by 52.5% to 47.5%, with 97.9% reporting. 
 
 
 
 “The Clinton campaign thinks this campaign is over,” he said. “They’re wrong.” 
 
 Cruz leaves the Republican race having won 565 delegates and 11 states, including the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses in January. Despite successfully building a strong base among evangelicals and social conservatives, he was unable to expand his following and to pivot to the unpredictable Trump, who repeatedly bashed him as “Lyin’ Ted”. 
 
 In an emotional address, Cruz told a room of supporters in Indianapolis: “From the beginning I’ve said I will continue on as long as there is a viable path to victory – tonight I am sorry to say it appears that math has been foreclosed.” 
 
 As the crowd shouted “no, no,” Cruz told attendees: “Together we left it out on the field. We gave it everything we got. But the voters chose another path, and so with a heavy heart but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation we are suspending our campaign.” 
 
 Cruz repeatedly referenced his idol Ronald Reagan’s unsuccessful attempt to wrest the Republican nomination from Gerald Ford in 1976, ending by promising: “There is no substitute for the America we will restore as the shining city on the hill for generations to come,” a reference to Reagan’s farewell address. 
 
 The Republican party elite, which has battled over the prospect of a Trump nomination, began to rally round him. Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, declared that Trump was the “presumptive nominee” and called on supporters to unite against Hillary Clinton. 
 
 Cruz’s exit leaves John Kasich the only remaining candidate in the race against Trump. In a statement, the Ohio governor’s chief strategist, John Weaver, told the Guardian: “The senator ran on strong conservative principles and his views are part of the broad Republican party. Donald Trump’s mad hatter ramblings are outside the conservative reform movement and we will continue onward to deny him the nomination.” 
 
 
 
 Kasich did not compete in Indiana as a result of a pact with Cruz and has so far only won his home state of Ohio. In a memo sent out earlier Tuesday night, Kasich vowed to stay in “unless a candidate reaches 1,237 bound delegates before the convention”. 
 
 Victory speech 
 
 Trump celebrated victory at his looming Fifth Avenue tower in New York, marking the seminal moment in which he was transformed from a maverick and implausible candidate into presumptive Republican nominee. 
 
 He delivered his victory speech from a podium poignantly positioned just in front of the escalator in his midtown Manhattan skyscraper where he had launched his unlikely bid for the White House 10 months ago. 
 
 Flanked by his wife Melania and children, with his controversial campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and convention manager Paul Manafort close by, he made soothing noises towards the Republican National Committee and its chairman Reince Preibus. “It’s not an easy job dealing with 17 egos,” he said, referring to the initial crowded pack of Republican presidential hopefuls, before adding: “I guess he’s now down to one ego.” 
 
 Trump effectively takes the nomination with a personal rating among voters stuck in the doldrums, with 67% of Americans thinking of him unfavorably. That makes him the least well-regarded presidential nominee of either main party since at least 1984 – and the hostility shown towards him by leaders of the Republican party is unprecedented. 
 
 But none of those hard facts appeared to take any shine off Trump’s moment of victory. “We want to bring unity to the Republican party. We have to bring unity,” he said. 
 
 Trump glossed over his terrible poll ratings among female voters by saying: “Women. I love winning with women.” He similarly shrugged off similar evidence of the major problem he faces with Hispanic voters and African Americans. 
 
 “We are going to win, we are going to win in November. And we are going to win big,” he said. 
 
 Recognizing the shift in gear that faces the Trump campaign, he put a marker in the sand. “Now we are going after Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. “She will not be a great president, she will not be a good president, she will be a poor president.” 
 
 He indicated that he intended to go after Clinton on the issue of trade and the loss of American jobs to foreign countries. “She doesn’t understand trade and her husband signed perhaps in the history of the world the single worst trade deal, Nafta.” 
 
 He also highlighted Clinton’s comments on the coal industry and the need to restrict it in the fight against climate change. “Hillary Clinton talked about the miners as though they were just numbers, and she said she wanted the mines closed and she would never let them work again. Let me tell you, the mines are going to start to work again.” 
 
 The Sanders campaign hopes his victory in Indiana will mark one last turning point in a Democratic race characterised by a series of surprise comebacks that have prolonged Clinton’s otherwise relentless path toward the nomination. 
 
 He is well placed to pull off similar wins in West Virginia on 10 May and Oregon on 17 May, before a final showdown next month in California, whose 546 delegates present the biggest prize of the contest. 
 
 But even though Sanders has pledged to keep competing until the party convention in Philadelphia this July, he has acknowledged that catching up with Clinton is an “uphill struggle”. 
 
 Before Indiana, the former secretary of state was nearly 300 pledged delegates ahead of her Vermont rival and within 200 delegates of crossing the finish line including the controversial superdelegates – party figures who are able to vote independently of election results and overwhelmingly back Clinton. 
 
 Nonetheless, the Sanders team will view the Indiana result as an important vindication of their decision to keep pressuring superdelegates to change their minds. 
 
 ‘Abyss’ 
 
 Trump’s victory in Indiana ended the best hope of blocking a presidential nomination Cruz had claimed will plunge America into the political “abyss”. 
 
 The Texas senator’s decision to drop out had been the subject of debate with the campaign but some Cruz aides urging that he still had a better chance of being the nominee after his loss in Indiana than he did when he declared in March. 
 
 Then Cruz was considered a conservative gadfly who would have to claw and fight rivals to be the favorite among even his Tea Party base but Cruz fended off rival after rival to win the Iowa caucuses and become the conservative standard-bearer in the field. 
 
 Despite a day of dire warnings from Cruz, Trump was declared victor by the Associated Press within seconds of polls closing. 
 
 Cruz, whose campaign had built a formidable grassroots operation, with volunteers knocking on 70,000 doors in Indiana in the three days before the primary and making 100,000 calls on the day before the election, but it was all for naught. As one top aide said of the campaign as a whole: “Sometimes you can make all the right moves and still lose.” 
 
 With 97.9% reporting, Trump had won 53.3% of the vote in Indiana, with Cruz getting 36.6% and Kasich 7.6%. Trump now has 1,047 pledged delegates as well, of the 1,237 he needs to be the party’s nominee. 
 
 Trump now looks almost certain to inherit a party he has left bitterly divided through a brand of politics defined by innuendo, race-baiting and outright demagoguery. 
 
 His latest sally came in a telephone interview with Fox News on Tuesday, in which the Republican frontrunner alleged that Cruz’s father, Rafael, had met with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination of John F Kennedy and implied that Rafael Cruz was somehow involved. 
 
 Trump had previously threatened to “spill the beans” about Cruz’s wife and has spread a variety of clearly false stories, starting from his June announcement speech that Mexico was deliberately sending rapists into the US and including the repeated claim that American general John Pershing committed war crimes in the Philippines. The latter story appears to have originated via an internet hoax spread by email. 
 
 Cruz’s campaign-ending loss in Indiana came after a significant investment of resources by anti-Trump forces in the state. Cruz and anti-Trump Super Pacs spent $6m in the state on television advertising while Trump spent less than a million. 
 
 Further, in a vain attempt for a boost in the Hoosier State, Cruz unveiled former rival Carly Fiorina as his running mate if he receives the nomination and was able to cajole the state’s sitting governor, Mike Pence, into an endorsement. In contrast, Trump was endorsed in the state by a number of prominent former college basketball coaches, led by legendary Indiana University coach Bobby Knight. 
 
 With his loss on Tuesday night, Cruz had not won a primary election for over a month since his 5 April win in Wisconsin. Despite Cruz doing well in delegate selection contests in Colorado and Wyoming, Trump won seven consecutive primaries and over 200 delegates over the last two weeks. 
 
 Earlier, Trump had called for Cruz to drop out of the race in a tweet: “Lyin’ Ted Cruz consistently said that he will, and must, win Indiana. If he doesn’t he should drop out of the race-stop wasting time & money.” 
 
 Cruz took his advice. ||||| Ted Cruz vowed Monday that he’s “in for the distance,” but if the Texas senator loses Indiana on Tuesday he risks big donors abandoning the Stop Trump effort that has spent millions supporting him in battleground states. 
 
 More than a half-dozen Republicans involved in the pro-Cruz and anti-Trump push told POLITICO that Indiana is crucial for Cruz to keeping the cash flowing, as skittish donors have grown weary after a string of recent losses. 
 
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 “If he can’t be stopped in Indiana, you will have a lot of people who just throw up their arms and say, ‘Well, I guess he can’t be stopped,’” said Erick Erickson, an influential Republican activist who has tried to organize anti-Trump forces. “I think the super donors or the megadonors — they stop spending money. They’re not going to get on board Trump, but they’re not going to continue to invest in what they perceive as a lost cause.” 
 
 After Trump rolled through the Northeast, winning every county but one in the past six states, the pressure is on Cruz — and it’s showing. Cruz has run through his entire political playbook to save Indiana. 
 
 His camp, expressing pessimism over the Texas senator's chances, is bracing for staff cuts "at a minimum" if he loses Indiana, an aide told the Associated Press on Tuesday. Cruz's campaign manager Jeff Roe, however, tweeted that the AP report is "dead wrong." 
 
 He struck a nonaggression pact with John Kasich. He bought TV ads. His supportive super PACs bought TV ads. He blitzed the Sunday shows. He barnstormed the state on a bus tour. He got the governor’s endorsement. He even named his running mate. 
 
 And if all that is not enough, it’s not clear what would be — both to anti-Trump donors and to those inside his own campaign. 
 
 “If we lose Indiana, we have to do some soul searching,” said one top Cruz adviser, adding things are looking “rough right now.” 
 
 Indeed, the most recent poll, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey conducted by the Marist Institute and released on Sunday, had Trump ahead of Cruz by 15 points, though previous surveys showed closer margins. 
 
 The loss could cost Cruz one of his last remaining advantages: Millions in ad support from groups like the Club for Growth, Our Principles PAC and the pro-Cruz Trusted Leadership PAC. 
 
 Those ads boosted him in Wisconsin — his most recent victory, but one that came almost a month ago — and they’re supporting Cruz’s bid in Indiana, but one operative inside a big-money Stop Trump group explained the current mindset of donors bluntly: “It’ll be tough for them to want to jump in on a major money effort in California when hopes are getting dim.” 
 
 “If Cruz loses Indiana, many donors will take a step back and reassess what may happen in California,” said Sean Noble, a Republican strategist with ties to some anti-Trump donors, including Randy Kendrick, who gave $100,000 to Our Principles PAC in March. 
 
 Fred Malek, finance chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said wealthy donors are simply “more hesitant to put large sums to work until they see more results.” 
 
 “I think donors are going to take a very hard look at that before they put in large money between Indiana and California,” Malek said. 
 
 Erickson’s ad hoc coalition of anti-Trump Republicans, for instance, is planning a conference call on Wednesday to discuss its next steps, including re-examining a third-party challenge. 
 
 “You’re already starting to see two tracks moving forward,” Erickson said, adding that a Trump win Tuesday would mean “much more energy going toward a third-party candidate.” 
 
 Indiana won’t be mathematically decisive for Trump. He can’t secure the 1,237 delegates he needs to lock up the nomination until California votes on June 7. But a victory could deliver a “psychological” blow — multiple GOP operatives used that same word — to his opposition amid accelerating talk among Republicans of coalescing behind Trump, who has already declared himself the “presumptive nominee.” 
 
 “The donors are seeing the same nightly news shows and, if that’s having a strong influence on their decisions, you have to overcome that narrative, which will be the challenge for Cruz,” said the operative working for an anti-Trump group. 
 
 In Indiana on Monday, Cruz declared, “I am in for the distance,” and over the weekend, he vowed at the California Republican Party convention, “We’re all in” in the Golden State. The Stop Trump movement has vowed to soldier on until Trump officially clinches. But 2016 has witnessed plenty of similarly resolute statements from fallen Trump foes, most notably Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. 
 
 At one point, Rubio declared, “I don’t care if I have to get in my pickup truck and drive around the country” to battle Trump. He dropped out only weeks later. 
 
 But whether or not Cruz wants to continue on, campaign cash could be a determining factor. 
 
 The latest financial reports from Bernie Sanders offer a stark warning of what happens to campaigns when the media and public label them electoral losers. Sanders saw his monthly haul plunge by 40 percent, from $44 million in February to $25.8 million in March. 
 
 California, with its population of 38 million, is already the most expensive state to run a campaign in the country and the rules of its primary — with each of the state’s 53 congressional districts having three delegates — mean it will likely be even harder to compete on the cheap. 
 
 “Cruz’s only path would be to capture enough congressional districts in California to hold Trump under 1,237,” Noble said. 
 
 Perhaps the biggest wild card for Cruz: The financial fate of the Stop Trump super PACs rests in the hands of so few donors. 
 
 So far, much of the anti-Trump money has come from a handful of super-rich donors, including brothers Warren and Jackson T. Stephens ($7.1 million between the Club for Growth and Our Principles PAC), Richard UIhlein ($4 million), Joe and Marlene Ricketts ($5.5 million) and Paul Singer ($1.5 million). 
 
 Those four families alone could keep the anti-Trump movement afloat if they wanted. They could almost single-handedly sink it, as well, by cutting off funds. 
 
 The last week has seen a steady drumbeat toward Trump, with House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster and Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller both endorsing the Manhattan businessman. Former House Speaker John Boehner and former Sen. Judd Gregg, meanwhile, both sounded off against Cruz, with Boehner calling him “Lucifer in the flesh.” 
 
 Trump seems to sense he is on the threshold of winning the nomination, saying Sunday in Indiana his opponents are “hanging by their fingertips.” 
 
 But if Cruz can pull off a surprise win, it will be his biggest comeback yet. And it would reshape the dynamic of the race entirely, making Trump’s path to 1,237 precarious — forcing him to essentially sweep California — and ensuring all of Cruz’s efforts to lock up supporters in the shadow war for delegates would matter. 
 
 Cruz himself has done little to downplay Indiana’s pivotal role. As he wrote in a fundraising email to supporters last week: “This is the single, biggest, most important day for our campaign so far.”
– Ted Cruz is out. The Texas senator is ending his campaign after being routed in Indiana by Donald Trump in Tuesday's primary, reports the AP. Cruz had staged a last stand in the state in the hope of preventing Trump from securing the nomination, but he told supporters that he has no "viable path to victory" after the loss. "The voters chose another path," he said. "We gave it everything we've got." Trump, who was leading by about 15 points, had been declared the winner as soon as polls closed at 7pm EDT. "We're going after Hillary Clinton," he told his own supporters after Cruz's announcement. "And we're going to win." In his speech, Trump also praised Cruz as "one hell of a competitor" and said he had an "amazing future." Shortly after Cruz's bombshell, Republican National Committee chief Reince Priebus tweeted that Trump is the "presumptive nominee," adding that "we all need to unite and focus on defeating" Clinton. In his own speech, Cruz made no mention of the front-runner. Earlier in the day, however, he unleashed a diatribe, calling Trump a "serial philanderer" and a "pathological liar," notes NBC News. That came after Trump dredged up a bizarre National Enquirer report linking Cruz's dad to Lee Harvey Oswald. John Kasich was a distant third in Indiana, though he gave no indication he planned to follow Cruz's lead and drop out.