The U.S. contests for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations have turned into contentious fights for delegates to the parties’ national conventions, where the candidates for November’s national election will be picked.
Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump is the Republican front-runner, but he complained Monday that party officials have created a “crooked, crooked system” to keep him from winning a first-ballot victory at the party’s July convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
While Trump has won the most state-by-state nominating contests, he is well short of a majority of convention delegates needed to claim the nomination.
“The system, folks, is rigged,” Trump told a rally in New York, where both parties are holding primary elections April 19. “It’s a rigged, disgusting, dirty system.”
U.S. political analysts are widely suggesting that if Trump does not win a first-ballot victory at the national convention, he will not win the nomination at all, with many of his delegates abandoning him in subsequent ballots, possibly handing the nomination to Cruz, a conservative firebrand in the halls of Congress in Washington.
Some Republican delegates say they are concerned that numerous national polls in the U.S. show both Trump and Cruz losing the November election to the leading Democratic contender, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, although Cruz fares better against her.
Delegates pledged to Trump based on the voting in the state contests are generally committed to vote for him on the first convention ballot, but can change their mind and vote for another candidate on the second and later ballots until someone reaches the 1,237 figure.
Some Republican figures say they want their national convention to nominate someone other than the three remaining candidates.
One possible alternative choice, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, called a news conference for later in the day to rule himself out. Ryan was the party’s losing vice presidential candidate in 2012.
Clinton, the country’s top diplomat from 2009 to 2013, has a wide convention delegate lead over her sole challenger, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but also has yet to reach a majority.
She has 1,786 convention delegates of the 2,383 she needs to claim the nomination, compared to 1,107 for Sanders. But Sanders, who waged a tough campaign against Clinton’s connections to Wall Street financiers, has won seven of the last eight state contests, giving him some momentum heading into the New York contest.
Source-Voice of America
