Hillary Clinton walked away from the New York primary last night with a big win. (Nathania Johnson / Wikimedia Commons)
Tuesday was the New York primary, and despite voting issues and allegations of foul play, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both walked away with huge wins.
For the first time in a long time, New York was a key state in the presidential primary. The Ted Cruz campaign had already written off the state as a loss, but Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Clinton all saw this as a state they needed to win.
Trump and Clinton solidified their leads, and the race became much tougher for Sanders.
As the dust settles on the most recent primary in this whirlwind of a presidential election, catch up on everything you need to know about Tuesday night.
1. Trump and Clinton had HUGE wins.
This was no repeat of states like Missouri, where we held our breaths to see who would win. Trump won 60 percent of the vote with Ohio Governor John Kasich in a very distant second place with 25.2 percent. Clinton also won big, with 58 percent of the vote to Sanders' 42 percent.
Both candidates claim New York as their home state: Trump is from Queens and (of course) has buildings with his name on them all over Manhattan, while Clinton was a New York senator for eight years and now lives in Chappaqua, an NYC suburb.
For Trump, this win makes his path to the nomination much easier, and also helps him silence the negative headlines about him that have been dominating the press lately. His comments on abortion and accidentally mixing up 9/11 with 7-Eleven didn't seem to have an effect on New York Republicans -- exit polls show that the majority believe he's most likely to beat Clinton in a general election.
This might quiet some of his claims that the system is rigged against him.
Clinton, meanwhile, finally broke her losing streak after Sanders won eight primaries in a row. New York has the second highest number of delegates for Democrats, so this win was key for her and a blow to Sanders, who also has strong ties to New York, where he was born and raised.
Clinton's win was decisive in more ways than one. Not only did she win among African-Americans and Latinas...
... she also received more popular votes than every other GOP candidate combined.
While Sanders swept nearly the entire state north of New York City and voters 18-29, Clinton dominated in the highly populated Big Apple.
2. Cruz even lost to people who aren't even in the race anymore.
Cruz's campaign wasn't predicting a good day in New York -- they expected to come away with very few delegates. And they did. They came away with zero.
Even though the Cruz campaign wasn't expecting much success, they probably didn't think they would lose as badly as they did. Cruz was even behind Ben Carson in some districts, who dropped out of the race weeks ago.
Ouch.
Cruz ended up with about 15 percent of the vote and is already turning his focus to Maryland and Pennsylvania, which both vote next week.
3. Voters are unhappy with election rules.
Another primary, another voting controversy. It almost feels routine at this point, doesn't it?
More than 125,000 Democratic voters were erased from the records before the primary Tuesday for various reasons. People were FURIOUS.
About 70,000 of these voters were apparently purged from the records because they were inactive in the last two federal elections.
A group called Election Justice USA tried to file a temporary restraining order that would have allowed the unlisted people to vote, but a federal judge denied it.
Sanders' campaign in particular was angry with how the situation was handled, and even Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the Board of Elections to reverse the purge.
There are mad conspiracy theories flying around involving the Clinton campaign.
Sanders also wasn't happy that New York's primary is closed -- only registered Republicans and Democrats can vote.
But still, we learned three things:
- Brooklyn is heavily Democratic, so if Dem voters disappeared from the rolls, that affected Sanders and Clinton. There's no way anyone at the election board could know who a Brooklyn voter who hasn't voted in the past two presidential elections was going to vote for this time.
- Brooklyn went overwhelmingly for Clinton, in most demographics.
- Even if Sanders had picked up every vote that disappeared from the rolls, he still wouldn't have won.
4. Trump still lost in Manhattan, despite his name being all over the place.
Trump's name is plastered over more than a dozen properties in Manhattan, so you'd think that he would win that borough of New York easily ... right?
Nope. Despite being virtually unable to escape reminders of Trump in the region, Manhattan voters turned to Kasich instead. Ouch.
5. Sanders refuses to back down.
Most outlets are predicting the death of Sanders' campaign given Clinton's wide delegate lead, but the candidate who originally started this campaign as a protest refuses to remove his voice from the race.
After the results came in, Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver says that even if Sanders doesn't have the number of delegates required to win by June 7th, the campaign will still try to persuade superdelegates to switch sides before the convention in July.
There was a mixed response to this plan -- while some Bernie supporters are behind him all the way, other Democrats are a bit more skeptical of his chances at winning the nomination and think he should try to help unite the party behind Clinton instead.
So much respect for Jeff Weaver tonight. I'm with the political revolution until the convention and beyond #WeWontBackDown
— Alik (@almyrOH) April 20, 2016
Given that Sanders started this campaign as a way to make his voice heard and draw attention to issues he believes are important for the entire country, it's unlikely that he'll concede to Clinton that easily.
With just over a month left before the end of primary voting, the race is starting to come down to the wire. Sanders and Cruz need wins more than ever, while Trump and Clinton are hoping to solidify their leads before their respective conventions over the summer. Clinton has already begun calling on Sanders supporters for party unity...
...while Trump continues to say that the only way he won't receive the nomination is if there's foul play.
Next Tuesday is another big election day, with primaries in five states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Next week could make or break campaigns -- make sure you stay informed.
This article was written by Lauren Wethers and originally appeared on Kicker. Kicker explains the most important, compelling things going on in the world and empowers you to get in the know, make up your own mind, and take action. For more, check out the Kicker site, like their Facebook page, or subscribe to their email newsletter.