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Marco Rubio scores second win, contour of Republican race unchanged

Xinhua, March 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

Republican Marco Rubio on Sunday scored his second victory since the 2016 Republican presidential nomination process began on Feb. 1.

Rubio, the junior U.S. senator from Florida was projected by U.S. major TV as the winner of the Puerto Rico Republican primary shortly after all polls closed.

Early results with 25 percent of all votes counted showed Marco won 73.6 percent. If he won more than half of the votes, he would get all 23 delegates at stake.

However, Rubio's commanding victory in Puerto Rico on Sunday would do little to alter the broader contours of a race in which New York billionaire developer Donald Trump and Texas Senator ted Cruz maintained significant delegate leads over him.

Trump and Cruz entered the contest on Sunday with 382 and 300 delegates respectively, compared to Rubio's 128 delegates, according to a New York Times delegate count.

After his limp showing in February contests, Super Tuesday contests and Super Saturday contests, Rubio, once regarded by mainstream Republicans as an alternative to Trump after Jeb Bush bowed out, was facing an uphill battle to justify his stay in the race.

The upcoming Florida Republican primary on March 15, when 99 delegates would be awarded for the first time in this primary season based on the "winner-take-all" rule, could be the last chance for Rubio to convince mainstream Republicans that he, rather than Cruz, was the one for them to rally around.

However, multiple polls all showed that Rubio now trailed Trump by large margins in Florida, his home state.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton faced off in the Democratic caucuses in Maine on Sunday, where delegates were up for grabs.

The caucuses were still underway and would close at 8 p.m. local time. However, the result of the only Democratic contest on Sunday also would have little impact on the nomination process, given the fact that Democrats allot their delegates proportionally and Clinton now enjoyed an almost insurmountable pledged delegate lead over Sanders with 663 to 459. Endite