Trump, Sanders win second round in U.S. presidential vote

The primaries to nominate the candidates from the Republican and Democrat parties were held on Feb. 9 in the state of New Hampshire as part of the second round in the U.S. presidential elections. Populist real estate mogul Donald Trump earned 35 percent of the vote among Republicans, followed by liberal Ohio Governor John Kasich (16%) and conservative ideologue Ted Cruz (11%), a senator from Texas.

Among the Democrats, radical leftist and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won 60 percent, compared to the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton (39%), who most recently served as U.S. secretary of state.

The next primaries will be among Republicans in South Carolina on Feb. 20. The Democrats in Nevada will hold their caucuses the same day, followed by the Nevada Republicans on Feb. 23. Democrats in South Carolina will hold their primaries on Feb. 27. (Primaries are held by secret ballot while caucasus involve voting at public gatherings.)

Zenon Zawada: If the first-round vote in Iowa was a victory for Ukraine, then this second round in New Hampshire is a defeat for Ukraine. Among the key foreign policy priorities of Trump is to improve relations with Russian President Putin as part of his plan “to bomb the shit out of the Islamic State.” He has also refused to distance himself from Putin’s remarks complimenting him and has come to Putin’s defense.

As for the Democrat Party, Sanders has also expressed the need to improve relations with Putin, contrary to Hillary Clinton’s consistent position (shared by the Western establishment) that’s critical of Putin’s policies and supports sanctions.

In the long term, Trump is a serious contender for the Republican nomination, along with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. However, we don’t view Sanders’s candidacy as serious. His victory in New Hampshire is largely the result of being a senator from its neighboring state, Vermont.

We see Clinton winning the next rounds of primaries rather confidently. In the worse-case scenario of Sanders winning the nomination, billionaire Michael Bloomberg has suggested he could launch an independent campaign, which would be aimed at defeating the Republican candidate.