NEW YORK (AP) — From a car wash in Queens to a hockey arena in Buffalo, both parties' presidential candidates spread out across New York Monday in a final quest for votes, a surreal scene for a state that hasn't experienced contested White House primaries in decades. 
 
 For Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, victories in New York Tuesday could help quiet critics who have questioned their strength as front-runners. Each has suffered losses in recent contests that emboldened their rivals, though they still lead in delegate counts and are favored in New York. 
 
 Clinton, who represented the state as a senator for eight years, spent the final hours of campaigning trying to drive up turnout among women and minorities, her most ardent supporters. Since Sunday, she's danced to Latin music at a Brooklyn block party, vowed to defend abortion rights to female supporters in Manhattan, prayed at black church in Westchester, drunk a bubble tea at a dumpling shop in Flushing and cheered newly unionized workers in Queens. 
 
 "We're not taking anything for granted," she said Monday after greeting workers at the Hi-Tek Car Wash & Lube in Queens. "Tell your friends and your family, everyone, to please vote tomorrow." 
 
 Clinton's campaign was blunter in outlining the state of the Democratic race. Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook declared the primary effectively over, saying Sanders faced a "close to impossible path to the nomination." With the contest between Sanders and Clinton becoming increasingly tense, Mook said the Vermont senator had to choose whether he wanted to stay on a "destructive path" that could hurt the party's eventual nominee. 
 
 Sanders has rattled off a string of wins in recent primaries and caucuses. But unless he can topple Clinton in a delegate-rich state like New York, he faces increasingly limited opportunities to change the trajectory of the race. 
 
 While polling shows Clinton with a comfortable lead in New York, Sanders held out hope for a closer race. 
 
 "This is a campaign on the move," Sanders shouted to a crowd of thousands gathered along the waterfront in Queens Monday night, with the Manhattan skyline serving as a dramatic backdrop. "This is a movement getting the establishment very, very nervous." 
 
 For Trump, New York is an opportunity to rebound from a trying stretch for his campaign — and with an exclamation point. The biggest question for him heading into Tuesday is whether he captures more than 50 percent of the vote statewide, which would put him in strong position to win all of the state's 95 GOP delegates. 
 
 Trump was closing his New York campaigning with an evening rally in Buffalo, where thousands packed the city's hockey arena to catch a glimpse of the billionaire businessman. He's spent the past week emphasizing his ties to New York, particularly New York City, where he was born and where buildings bear his name. 
 
 "We love this city," he said Monday in brief remarks to reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower. "You look at the other folks that are running, they couldn't care less about New York." 
 
 A big win for Trump is crucial if he hopes to clinch the nomination before the party's convention in July. If the race isn't settled by then, he faces the very real prospect of losing to Ted Cruz, whose campaign is mastering the complicated process of lining up individual delegates who could shift their support to the Texas senator after the first round of convention balloting. 
 
 In New Mexico Monday, the state Republican Party announced a two-week extension for delegate applicants who missed an April 15 deadline. Cruz allies in the state criticized the move as a ploy by the Trump campaign as it tries to catch up with his rival's operation. 
 
 "This is truly Trump," said state lawmaker Rod Montoya, who has applied to be a delegate to the national convention. "Rather than learning how the process works, he cries and complains to get the process changed because he doesn't like it." 
 
 Cruz, who infamously panned Trump's "New York values" earlier in the primary, was bracing for a tough showing in Tuesday's contest. He was already looking ahead on the primary calendar, spending Monday campaigning in Maryland, where voters head to the polls next week. 
 
 Trump leads the GOP race with 744 delegates, ahead of Cruz with 545 and Kasich with 144. It takes 1,237 to win the GOP nomination. 
 
 Among Democrats, Clinton has accumulated 1,758 delegates to Sanders' 1,076. Those totals include both pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses, as well as superdelegates, the party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice regardless of how their state votes. 
 
 Heading into Tuesday's primary, Sanders needs to win 68 percent of the remaining delegates if he hopes to clinch the Democratic nomination. It takes 2,383 to win. 
 
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 AP writers Hope Yen, Lisa Lerer, Steve Peoples, Julie Bykowicz and Morgan Lee contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Jonathan Lemire at http://twitter.com/JonLemire ||||| Hillary Clinton has been her own worst enemy at times (think homebrew servers and Goldman Sachs speeches) but her big win in Ohio Tuesday night likely catapulted her into history as the first female nominee of a major party. 
 
 Bernie Sanders’ presidential dreams aren’t quite dead. Yet his remarkable insurgency is a teetering Jenga pile of youth support, momentum and access to online millions — and Clinton just plucked out the buttressing block. She won Ohio resoundingly (her massive wins in Florida and North Carolina were a much, much bigger deal in terms of delegates) and she proved that she could capture a diverse and populous industrial Midwestern battleground a week after her shocking loss in Michigan. 
 
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 This is a big haul. The delegate math for Sanders has been pretty dim since Super Tuesday, but now his core rationale (that he owned the hearts and votes of liberal and working-class northerners) suffered a serious, probably fatal, blow. He started off the night about 215 pledged delegates in the hole and will end the evening more than 300 behind Clinton, a margin bordering on the insurmountable. 
 
 Clinton’s wins coupled with Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s not-so-fast-fellas victory in his home state serve as a dual rebuke to Donald Trump, who has now become the singular focus of fire for every candidate left in the race. In fact, every podium utterance (save for Trump’s) sounded as if it had come off of the same speechwriting assembly line: America needs a uniter, not a divider; feel free to shout at my rally, I won’t beat you up; why can’t we all just get along, yadda, yadda, yadda. 
 
 The results cast the parties on divergent political paths: The Democrats seem destined to unite after a few more contests, while Kasich’s Ohio win, coupled with a possible victory by Ted Cruz in Missouri, makes it more likely than ever that the GOP is headed for a contested convention. Here are five takeaways: 
 
 1. The Gospel according to St. Marco. In many ways, Marco Rubio was at his best on the worst day of his political career, delivering an emotional — and prophetic — farewell speech that succinctly defined his divided party’s dilemma as the bitterest of primary campaigns grinds on. 
 
 The 44-year-old Florida senator, a slick, eloquent and aspirational conservative in a party that didn’t much value those attributes, was a man without a geographical or ideological foothold in the GOP, and his 20-point home state loss made soldiering on impossible. Moreover, his Miami bow-out underscored what made him fail in the first place: He touted the rebellious energy of the tea party movement while trying to put a lid on its runaway rage. 
 
 But embedded in his contradictions as a candidate was a message well worth heeding for Republicans: Anger is a niche product with an early expiration date; optimism has a wider consumer base and an unlimited shelf life. 
 
 “While we’re aware … this may not have been the year for a hopeful and optimistic vision of our future,” he said, “we want to unite this country … America needs a conservative movement, one that is based on ideas, principles. Not on fear. Not on anger. Not on preying on people’s frustrations.” 
 
 2. Democrats want to fight Trump, not each other. The exit polls were fuzzy on the topic, but the voters seemed to be sending their party a clear, collective message: Ditch the character-building internecine slap fight and unite to fight the common enemy. 
 
 In a year where establishment candidates have tumbled like protesters at a Trump rally, Clinton — the most entrenched political veteran to seek the presidency since Nixon — triumphed precisely because she is so committed to mastering of the details of a job Trump would delegate to super smart and thus-far-unidentified really terrific people. 
 
 Despite Sanders’ repeated calls for a revolution — and his seven-to-one success with voters under 30 — Democratic voters have overwhelmingly prioritized experience over a candidate’s “outsider” bona fides. That trend held in Ohio and Florida, the two biggest Tuesday prizes, where Democratic voters expressed revulsion at the spate of violent events at Trump rallies. 
 
 Clinton wasn’t subtle about pivoting to The Donald. “Tonight it’s clearer than ever that this might be one of the most consequential campaigns of our lifetimes,” the hoarse but ecstatic former secretary of state told a cheering audience in Miami. “Our commander in chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it.” 
 
 Sanders? 
 
 Oh, he’d run a “vigorous” campaign, she said in passing. 
 
 3. The Battle of Cleveland. The impact of Rubio’s exit — and Kasich’s sudden rise — creates a mess of unpredictable scenarios that could end in Trump’s coronation, a contested convention or some kind of split decision that sends the GOP’s mid-July convention into fractious anarchy. For starters, it’s unclear where the Florida senator’s voters (15 to 20 percent of the GOP electorate) will go; the conventional wisdom is that Kasich will benefit more than Cruz, but that’s no lock. 
 
 The next batch of state contests — New Jersey, Arizona, Delaware, South Dakota and Montana — seem to favor Trump, but the race has entered a new volatile stage. And, increasingly, the stage seems set for some kind of showdown on the convention floor (and the streets outside) when the Republicans return to Cleveland. 
 
 4. Angry white people love Donald Trump. Does anyone else? Time to stop judging Trump by the hothouse standards of the ultra-conservative GOP primary. He’s likely (though not a lock) to win his party’s nomination, and maybe — just maybe — his rhinestone-studded gloom-and-glare won’t sell to a general electorate that is agitated, but not nearly as pitchfork-pissed as he is. 
 
 Exit polls in Tuesday’s five voting states reinforced pretty much every single prevailing assumption about Trump’s core electorate — with a vengeance. White? Totally. Older? You betcha. Angry? Man, you have no idea. When pollsters asked respondents in Florida and Ohio who were ticked off with the federal government, they picked Marco Rubio and John Kasich, who touted the standard-issue D.C.-sucks mantra of the ‘90s and ‘00s GOP. 
 
 But when pollsters amped the question to 11 — to voters who described themselves as “angry” — Trump (an orange Hulk in a pack of better-behaved Bruce Banners) destroyed the competition. If you’ve been to one of his rallies, or seen him call for anti-Trump protesters to be cuffed, bopped, arrested or chucked into the gutter, this comes as no surprise. 
 
 But here’s the rub: Even in Florida, where he dominated by 20 points over Rubio, Trump couldn’t quite get over the 50 percent mark. True, GOP rage is at a fever pitch, but it’s not universal: In fact, six in 10 Republican exit-poll respondents in all five states said they aren’t angry — and an even smaller percentage of the general electorate identifies as irate, and a lot of those voters aren’t white and aren’t conservative. Again, Rubio played prophet: “The politics of resentment of other people will not only leave us a fractured party but will leave us a fractured nation.” 
 
 5. Bernie is being kept alive by independents. Clinton’s convincing victory in Ohio was all the more impressive because it took place in an open primary state that permitted same-day registration by independents. But exit polls, and reports from both campaigns, indicate that Clinton cleaned up by intensifying her turnout operations in black communities (she had a net 15-point lead in Ohio among registered Democrats) not by crossing over to working-class whites and young people who are more prone to avoid party affiliations. 
 
 In Illinois, Clinton lost indies by a roughly 75-to-25 percent margin — similar to the ratio that doomed her in Michigan a week ago. Trump, like Sanders, feasts on independents and thrives in open primaries, and Clinton’s staff acknowledges she has to cut into those margins to succeed in the fall. “It’s a serious problem,” a senior Clinton staffer told me. “It’s something we are going to be focused on once — I mean if — we get past Bernie.” ||||| Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton points to members in the audience after speaking at the 2016 Legislative Conference of North America's Building Trades Unions in Washington, Tuesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton points to members in the audience after speaking at the 2016 Legislative Conference of North America's Building Trades Unions in Washington, Tuesday, April 19, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) (Associated Press) 
 
 NEW YORK (AP) — Front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton swept to resounding victories in Tuesday's New York primary, with Trump bouncing back from a difficult stretch in his Republican campaign and Clinton pushing tantalizingly close to locking up the Democratic nomination. 
 
 "The race for the nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight," Clinton declared to cheering supporters. 
 
 Trump captured more than 50 percent of the vote in New York and was headed toward a big delegate haul in his home state, a commanding showing that keeps him on a path to the GOP nomination if he continues to win. He claimed at least half of the 95 delegates at stake Tuesday, and was likely to add to his tally in individual congressional districts. 
 
 A confident Trump insisted it was "impossible" for his rivals to catch him. 
 
 "We don't have much of a race anymore," he said during a victory rally in the lobby of the Manhattan tower bearing his name. He peppered his brash remarks with more references to the economy and other policy proposals than normal, reflecting the influence of a new team of advisers seeking to professionalize his campaign. 
 
 Clinton's triumph padded her delegate lead over rival Bernie Sanders and strengthened her claim to the Democratic nomination that eluded her eight years ago. In a shift toward the general election, she made a direct appeal to Sanders' loyal supporters, telling them she believes "there is more that unites us than divides us." 
 
 With 247 delegates at stake, Clinton picked up at least 104 while Sanders gained at least 85. Many remained to be allocated, pending final vote tallies 
 
 Sanders energized young people and liberals in New York, as he has across the country, but it wasn't enough to pull off the upset victory he desperately needed to change the trajectory of the Democratic race. Still, the Vermont senator vowed to keep competing. 
 
 "We've got a shot to victory," Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We have come a very long way in the last 11 months, and we are going to fight this out until the end of the process." 
 
 The fight for New York's delegate haul consumed the presidential contenders for two weeks, an eternity in the fast-moving White House race. Candidates blanketed every corner of New York, bidding for votes from Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs to the working class cities and rural enclaves that dot the rest of the state. 
 
 The nominating contests will stay centered in the Northeast in the coming days, with Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania all holding contests next week. Sanders spent Tuesday in Pennsylvania, as did Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump's closest rival. 
 
 Cruz panned Trump's win as little more than "a politician winning his home state," then implored Republicans to unite around his candidacy. 
 
 "We must unite the Republican Party because doing so is the first step in uniting all Americans," Cruz said in remarks read off a teleprompter. 
 
 Trump needed a strong showing to keep alive his chances of clinching the GOP nomination before the party's July convention — and to quiet critics who say the long primary season has exposed big deficiencies in his campaign effort. 
 
 Having spent months relying on a slim staff, Trump has started hiring more seasoned campaign veterans. He's acknowledged that bringing new people into his orbit may cause some strife, but says the moves were necessary at this stage of the race. 
 
 Cruz is trying to stay close enough in the delegate count to push the GOP race to a contested convention. His campaign feels confident that it's mastered the complicated process of lining up individual delegates who could shift their support to the Texas senator after a first round of convention balloting. 
 
 Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the only other Republican left in the race, sought to add to his scant delegate total in New York and keep up his bid to play a long-shot spoiler at the convention. He bested Cruz on Tuesday and is refusing to end his campaign despite winning only his home state. 
 
 Trump's political strength, though he boasts of drawing new members to the party, has left some Republicans concerned that his nomination could splinter the GOP. Among Republican voters in New York, nearly 6 in 10 said the nominating contest is dividing the party, according to exit polls. 
 
 The surveys were conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks. 
 
 Trump leads the GOP race with 756 delegates, ahead of Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 144. Securing the GOP nomination requires 1,237. 
 
 Among Democrats, Clinton now has 1,862 delegates to Sanders' 1,161. Those totals include both pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses and superdelegates, the party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice regardless of how their state votes. It takes 2,383 to win the Democratic nomination. 
 
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 AP writers Lisa Lerer, Julie Bykowicz, Emily Swanson and Steve Peoples contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Jonathan Lemire at http://twitter.com/JonLemire ||||| LONG BEACH, Calif. — Hillary Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nominee in a surprise development on Monday, making her the first woman ever to win a major party’s presidential nomination one day before she was expected to cross the threshold. 
 
 The historic moment, years in the making, came after the former secretary of state passed the mark with a combination of pledged and superdelegates in her contest against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. 
 
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 But the announcement — first made by The Associated Press, and quickly confirmed by NBC and ABC — had not been expected until Tuesday night, when results from six states, including California and New Jersey, come in. Clinton's campaign had prepared a major victory rally in Brooklyn for Tuesday night, exactly eight years to the day after she conceded the 2008 race to then-Sen. Barack Obama. 
 
 Clinton’s embrace of the history-making occasion was uneasy. At one moment, her campaign was sending a fundraising text to supporters passing along the AP’s call. At another, she was tweeting about the coming primaries on Tuesday. 
 
 At her rally here on Monday night, Clinton alluded only briefly to the AP’s proclamation. 
 
 "According to the news, we are on the brink of a historic, unprecedented moment, but we still have work to do," she said. "We have six elections tomorrow and we are going to fight hard for every single vote, especially right here in California." 
 
 Later, during her brief remarks at her star-studded concert fundraiser at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre to end the evening, Clinton didn't even mention that the race had already been called, encouraging attendees to vote in California. Still, that didn't stop a host of celebrity speakers from alluding to the news but stressing the importance of competing through Tuesday. 
 
 Clinton’s victory sets up a titanic clash against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who ripped through 16 primary rivals on his way to becoming the unlikely leader of a party he joined only recently. 
 
 But Sanders, long suspicious of superdelegates' role in the process, refused to concede on Monday night. His communications director, Michael Briggs, decried the media's "rush to judgment," signaling Sanders' intention to fight on. 
 
 “It is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgment, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer," Briggs said in a statement noting that Clinton “does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination.” 
 
 It was indeed superdelegates who put Clinton over the top — the AP spent the day surveying these party insiders and counted those who said they were "unequivocally" for Clinton, according to the news agency's U.S. political editor, David Scott. 
 
 Delegates Remaining: 56 Delegates 2,814 1,893 56 2,382 Delegates Needed for Nomination 
 
 The timing was a surprise, coming only hours before voters head to the polls on the last major day of the Democratic primary, even if the outcome was not. And the Clinton campaign, mindful of the need to court Sanders supporters deeply suspicious of the process, signaled it understood the need to let the voters have their say. 
 
 “Hillary Clinton is working to earn every vote," campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement. "We look forward to Tuesday night, when Hillary Clinton will clinch not only a win in the popular vote, but also the majority of pledged delegates." 
 
 Before the AP updated its count and put her over the top, Clinton was just 23 delegates shy of the 2,383 needed to clinch the nomination, and with hundreds of delegates up for grabs on Tuesday, she was expected to easily cross that threshold. 
 
 But given Clinton’s reliance on superdelegates to reach a majority, Sanders has vowed to wage a bitter battle all the way to the Democratic National Convention in July, insisting that nothing is official until the ballots are tallied in Philadelphia and arguing that he would make a better opponent to face Trump. 
 
 So far, Clinton has trod lightly, wary of alienating progressives she needs for the coming general election battle. 
 
 “I certainly am going to be reaching out to Sen. Sanders and hope he will join me in that, because we've got to be unified going into the convention and coming out of the convention to take on Donald Trump,” Clinton told reporters on Monday. 
 
 Clinton has been eager to take on Trump — stepping up her attacks on his "racist" rhetoric and unfitness for the Oval Office — but earlier on Monday she found time to reflect on the historic nature of her victory. 
 
 "My supporters are passionate. They are committed. They have voted for me in great numbers across our country for many reasons. But among those reasons is their belief that having a woman president will make a great statement, a historic statement about what kind of country we are, what we stand for. It's really emotional. And I am someone who has been very touched and really encouraged by this extraordinary conviction that people have," she said. "It's predominantly women and girls, but not exclusively — men bring their daughters to meet me and tell me that they are supporting me because of their daughters. And I do think that it will make a very big difference for a father or a mother to be able to look at their daughter just like they can look at their son and say, 'You can be anything you want to be in this country, including president of the United States.'" 
 
 Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, have been at pains to show that they are taking nothing for granted — campaigning hard in California in recent weeks, looking to win the primary in the biggest state in the country as a capstone to her long march to the nomination. 
 
 But embedded in her comments in recent days is a clear message to Sanders: Your time is up. 
 
 Sanders has shocked the political world, and seemingly himself, by creating not only a progressive movement but also a fundraising powerhouse that will have helped him win more than 20 states, when all’s said and done. 
 
 It’s a stunning success for a democratic socialist from Vermont who only recently embraced the Democratic Party and has spent decades on Capitol Hill with few marquee legislative successes to his name. 
 
 But Sanders' frustration has been visible as Clinton barreled toward victory. 
 
 He bristled when asked by reporters on Monday whether he was "standing in the way of what could be the first female president," and, "At what point do you become a spoiler, though?" 
 
 Sanders brushed off the questions, pointing to polls that show him faring better than Clinton in head-to-head matchups against Trump. 
 
 "Our goal is to get as many delegates as we possibly can and to make the case to superdelegates that I believe the evidence is very strong that I am the strongest candidate," Sanders said at a news conference in Emeryville, California. 
 
 But he also hinted that he’s coming closer to accepting that the math just doesn’t work in his favor. 
 
 Sanders told reporters that he'll be headed on a plane back to Burlington on Tuesday night and that he and his aides will "assess where we are" after the election results come in. 
 
 As of Monday evening, Sanders faced a near-impossible task to overtake Clinton among pledged delegates. He would have needed to win roughly two-thirds of the pledged delegates between Tuesday’s contests and next week’s primary in the District of Columbia — a massive jump from the roughly 46 percent of pledged delegates he’s won thus far — to pass Clinton. 
 
 There are also clear signs that patience with Sanders has run out. 
 
 Reports leaked out on Monday that President Barack Obama spoke with Sanders on Sunday, and that Obama was ready to endorse Clinton as early as this week. 
 
 And Clinton herself on Monday said in not so subtle terms that she’s ready for the next phase in the campaign — one in which she takes the fight to Trump, with her 2008 primary rival by her side. 
 
 "I look forward to campaigning with the president and everyone else," she said. 
 
 Hadas Gold and Shane Goldmacher contributed to this report. ||||| Hillary Clinton won primaries in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, the night's most contested prize, as her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, struggled to get the boost he needed to try to close the gap in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. 
 
 Clinton also won a close contest in Illinois and was holding an extremely small margin in Missouri, with nearly all of the votes counted. With those contests so close, neither candidate will gain a significant edge from them in the race for delegates to the Democratic nominating convention this summer. Clinton's three big victories, by contrast, will give her a major gain. 
 
 “We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November,” Clinton told supporters here, and she quickly moved to an attack on the Republican she expects to face in that election, Donald Trump, whom she accused of offering “bluster and bigotry.” 
 
 “Our next commander in chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it; engage our allies, not alienate them,” she said. 
 
 “When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, barring all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn't make him strong — it makes him wrong.” 
 
 Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | March 15 election results | Track the delegate race | Sign up for the newsletter 
 
 Clinton barely mentioned Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, except to briefly congratulate him for running a “vigorous campaign.” 
 
 If Sanders was chastened by the results, he didn't let it show while speaking to rapturous supporters in Phoenix. 
 
 “Do not settle for the status quo when the status quo is broken,” he said in a speech in which he showed no sign of easing up on Clinton. He once again attacked her vote in favor of the war in Iraq and demanded she release the transcripts of lucrative speeches to Wall Street firms. 
 
 Sanders had worked aggressively over the last week to expand a beachhead in the nation's industrial states after his upset victory in Michigan last week exposed new vulnerabilities for Clinton. 
 
 That set up Ohio as a key contest, where both candidates campaigned extensively and spent large amounts on television advertising. Clinton's victory there will go a long way toward solidifying her margin in the delegate race and reassuring her supporters. 
 
 Clinton's victory in North Carolina continued her sweep through the South, where black voters make up a big share of the Democratic electorate. And her decisive win in Florida, where she took nearly two-thirds of the vote, will net her a large majority of the state's 246 delegates to the Democratic convention — the third-largest delegation after California and New York. 
 
 The wins mean Clinton will significantly expand her already large lead among delegates to this summer's convention, building a margin of roughly 300 delegates over Sanders, without counting the roughly 400 so-called superdelegates who back her — party leaders and elected officials who automatically get convention votes. 
 
 After Tuesday, the math looks increasingly daunting for her rival, who now would need a series of very big victories in big states to catch up with Clinton's growing lead in the delegate race. 
 
 That does not, however, mean she has clinched the nomination. Under the Democrats' rules, which allocate delegates proportionately to each candidate's vote, Clinton probably won't be able to do that until the primary season ends in California in June. 
 
 In the Michigan upset last week, frustration among Midwestern Democrats with some of the free-trade policies Clinton has backed over the years, as well as with the Wall Street institutions whose recklessness helped push the nation into recession in 2007, emerged as a significant liability for the former secretary of State. 
 
 That anger shaped the campaigns in the three Midwestern states. Polls had indicated that all three could have close contests, and after the big miss by pollsters in Michigan, all of whom predicted a Clinton victory, both campaigns were wary of predictions. 
 
 Sanders' attacks on corporate America, particularly on trade, clearly connected with many voters. 
 
 “I believe in his change,” said Sanders supporter Mark Russell, 59, who stopped to vote in the Clintonville neighborhood of Columbus, near Ohio State University, on his way to work at Goodwill Industries. 
 
 “I believe that right now we're run by corporations,” he said. “It's not an even playing field, and it counts against us. I believe that he can do something about that. He's the only one that's really talking in that direction.” 
 
 Yet Sanders' effort to translate that sort of sentiment into votes came up short this time. 
 
 Clinton continues to do well with voters like Tampa resident Zachary Hines, 26, who value her years of preparation. 
 
 “She's the most prepared and experienced candidate to run for president in modern history,” said Hines, who works as a marketing director for a theater company. “I'm very excited to vote for the first woman president.” 
 
 Exit polls suggested voters were more confident in Clinton's agenda, with 77% in Ohio saying her policies were realistic, as opposed to 58% saying the same about Sanders' proposals. The divide was even bigger in Florida, where only 46% of voters expressed confidence that the Sanders agenda was realistic, according to exit polling conducted for the major television networks and the Associated Press. 
 
 Female voters came out in force for Clinton on Tuesday. She won 67% of them in Florida and 58% of them in Ohio, according to the exit poll. She also dominated with nonwhite voters in both states, winning 73% of them in Florida and 63% in Ohio. Seniors supported her by a margin of nearly 4 to 1 in both states. 
 
 Clinton had been eager to avenge a Michigan loss that some operatives attributed to poor strategic decisions and resource deployment by a campaign that had grown complacent after public polls that proved wildly misleading. 
 
 To ensure she did not repeat that defeat, Clinton redoubled her focus on the Midwest. 
 
 The former secretary of State, who has locked up almost every major national union endorsement, mobilized her labor supporters and stepped up her opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership, the trade deal negotiated by President Obama that is reviled by unions. ||||| Bernie Sanders's campaign put out a statement tonight that, for the first time, implicitly admits what delegate-counters have been saying for a few weeks now: He's not going to be the nominee. 
 
 He's not going to drop out of the race, but in the opening paragraph of his statement he speaks of looking forward "to issue-oriented campaigns in the 14 contests to come" — an indication that he'll be ratcheting-down the anti-Clinton rhetoric, not ratcheting it up. But the real bombshell comes later in the statement when he describes the goal of amassing delegates primarily in terms of influencing the party platform rather than determining the nominee. 
 
 Read the whole thing (with emphasis added): 
 
 I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her victories tonight, and I look forward to issue-oriented campaigns in the 14 contests to come. I am proud that we were able to win a resounding victory tonight in Rhode Island, the one state with an open primary where independents had a say in the outcome. Democrats should recognize that the ticket with the best chance of winning this November must attract support from independents as well as Democrats. I am proud of my campaign’s record in that regard. The people in every state in this country should have the right to determine who they want as president and what the agenda of the Democratic Party should be. That’s why we are in this race until the last vote is cast. That is why this campaign is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform that calls for a $15 an hour minimum wage, an end to our disastrous trade policies, a Medicare-for-all health care system, breaking up Wall Street financial institutions, ending fracking in our country, making public colleges and universities tuition free and passing a carbon tax so we can effectively address the planetary crisis of climate change. 
 
 This amounts to a savvy, classy way to begin winding down a campaign that was much more successful than anyone expected it to be but still quite far from actually winning. Sanders is staying in the race and giving his supporters something to vote for, thus giving his operation something to continue organizing around. 
 
 The reality, however, is that while the text of the platform is a good focal point, it's not especially important in the grand scheme of things. The real test for the political revolution's lasting impact will be whether Bernie and Bernie's supporters can help Bernie-style candidates win down-ballot races and influence the composition of Democratic caucuses in Congress and state legislatures.
– Bernie Sanders didn't lose the Democratic race on Tuesday night, but with big wins for Hillary Clinton in Ohio and at least three other states, he lost the momentum from his surprise win in Michigan and fell further behind in the delegate count. Analysts say that although the senator plans to keep his campaign going, Clinton could now be impossible to catch. A roundup of coverage: Sanders is now more than 300 pledged delegates behind Clinton, which may be an insurmountable margin, reports Politico, which describes his candidacy as a "teetering Jenga pile of youth support, momentum, and access to online millions"—now minus the "buttressing block" of Ohio. Tuesday night's results were a huge setback for Sanders, who had been counting on wins in the Midwest to keep his candidacy viable, reports the New York Times, which notes that Clinton's delegate lead over Sanders is about triple the size of the lead Obama had over her at this stage in 2008. The Washington Post also declares the race all but over for Sanders, calling Ohio a "back-breaking blow" that makes it nearly impossible for him to catch Clinton—though he clearly "has both the determination and the resources to keep fighting," and his campaign has already "accomplished far more than almost anyone anticipated." Sanders would need a "series of very big victories in big states" to catch up at this point, the Los Angeles Times reports, but because of how delegates are allocated, Clinton is still unlikely to clinch the nomination before California votes in June. In her primary night speech, Clinton praised Sanders' "vigorous campaign," but her focus was Donald Trump. "When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn't make him strong, it makes him wrong," she said, per the Hill. "We should be bringing down barriers, not building walls," she continued. "You know, to be great, we can't be small. We can't lose what made America great in the first place." Sanders probably can't win, but he should definitely stay in the race, writes Timothy Egan in a New York Times op-ed, praising the Vermont senator for energizing young voters, forcing the Democratic party to pay attention to the "angry millions in the margins," and pulling Clinton to the left on issues like trade deals and Wall Street. By staying in the race, Sanders' ideas "will shape every part of the party platform, which will give Clinton what she lacks: a clear message," Egan writes. "Eventually, he'll endorse the woman he influenced, and Democrats will be the better for it."