WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s chances of clinching the U.S. Republican presidential nomination shot to a record high on global betting websites yesterday and the billionaire businessman, long viewed as a political outsider, won his first endorsement from a member of Congress.
Trump easily won the Nevada caucuses on Tuesday, giving him his third win in four early nominating contests and pressuring Republican rivals to come up with a way to stop a candidate who only last year was not seen as a serious contender for the Nov. 8 presidential election.
The real estate magnate swept Nevada by a margin of 22 percentage points, winning 45.9 percent of the vote.
It was the high point so far of an unorthodox campaign during which Trump has fought with Pope Francis, called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and promised to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to prevent illegal immigration.
Trump’s Nevada win is likely to further frustrate Republican establishment figures who, less than a month ago, were hoping his campaign as a political outsider was stalled after he lost the opening nominating contest in Iowa to Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas.
In his victory speech in Nevada, the former reality TV show host courted his base of blue-collar workers.
“I love the poorly educated,” he said, mentioning several demographic groups among whom he said he was winning.
By yesterday, that phrase was being widely discussed online, with some finding it funny and others arguing it was a welcome, nonjudgmental embrace of a constituency that other politicians might speak of only as a problem to be fixed.
Trump’s nearest rivals, Cruz and Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, have frequently attacked each other, clearing a path for Trump to the Republican nomination that includes primary elections in a slew of southern states on March 1, known as Super Tuesday.
“These guys have to figure out how to turn their fire on Trump,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist in Washington. Absent that, he said: “Which one is going to get out of this field?”
Rubio said Trump was only backed by a minority of Republicans.
