HARI SREENIVASAN, PBS HOST: Now for more on today's Empire State primary, we're joined
by Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg Politics, and in Albany is Karen Dewick, capital bureau
chief for New York State Public Radio.
Ladies, welcome to you both.
First, the results as we know them at this point.
The Associated Press projects Donald Trump has scored a resounding victory on the Republican
side, 69 percent to Kasich's 19, and it's too soon to call the Democratic race between
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
So, Ms. Jacobs, let me start with you first.
What do you read from the exit polls?
JENNIFER JACOBS, BLOOMBERG POLITICS: Well, what we see, it's very interesting -- the
GOP says they're divided.
These people were asked, voters were asked, do you feel like the campaigns have divided
you or energized you, and on the GOP side, 57 percent said divided.
On the Democratic side, 68 percent said energized.
That's fascinating to me.
Twenty-six percent of the Republicans said they would never vote for Trump.
With Hillary Clinton, 85 percent of Democrats said they would vote for her, only 13 percent
said that they wouldn't.
So what this shows is a unified party on the Democratic side, not so much on the GOP side,
and you had Ted Cruz in his speech just now in Pennsylvania saying, he's saying, we're
unified, over and over again.
He said, this is just a politician, Donald Trump, winning his home state.
He dismissed it, and then he went on to give this very uplifting message about how he wants
to unite the party, so that's the theme of the night for the Republicans is trying to
unite.
SREENIVASAN: Karen Dewick?
KAREN DEWICK, NEW YORK STATE PUBLIC RADIO: Well, the big question that I still have is,
were Kasich and Cruz able to pick up any delegates from Trump's big win?
Because this fight was fought in 27 separate congressional districts, and Cruz and Kasich,
they knew they weren't going to win, but they focused on particular districts where they
thought that, if Trump, under the rules, didn't get above 50 percent, they might be awarded
some delegates, and it's starting to look now like they might not have gotten very many,
and I'll be very interested to see that as the numbers come in.
And the Hillary/Bernie race, I'm really not all that surprised that it's as close as it's
coming out to be.
I mean, Hillary has the support of the party establishment in New York, so she had a leg
up, but just talking to Democrats that I know and covering various things in New York State,
it just seemed like the Bernie supporters were much more enthusiastic, and even though
there was going to be barriers to them voting, they had to have registered months ago in
the Democratic Party and some of them didn't, it does seem like maybe they were a little
more motivated to go out to vote, and I really want to see the margin, if she does win, how
much did she win by?
Is it less than ten percent?
So I've very curious about that in the hours to come.
SREENIVASAN: Jennifer Jacobs, how important is that margin question?
JACOBS: For the Republicans?
SREENIVASAN: For the Democrats.
JACOBS: Or for the Democrats -- it's huge.
Because Hillary Clinton wants to roll out of bed tomorrow morning as the presumptive
nominee.
She wants to have (inaudible) to be able to say, this is really over.
Enough is enough.
The Sanders people still have a lot of passion.
Are we going to see Bernie Sanders, even if she comes out with a huge margin, are we going
to see him bow out of the race?
Probably not.
They still have a big argument, she has won 18 states, he has won 16.
He's won seven of the last eight races, he's had these enormous crowds, even in New York,
where she's had much smaller crowds, so they still say -- oh, and in the national polls,
there's a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that shows that he is just two points behind
her nationally with Democrats.
So they feel like they still have the momentum.
Things are going to start getting rougher in the next week when those April 26, those
five states come up.
Hillary Clinton is expected to do well in those, so Bernie Sanders might be riding the
last of his wave, so that margin, if she really crushes him, is going to be a big blow for
the campaing.
SREENIVASAN: Karen Dewick, one of the interesting things from the exit polls that I was reading
was, just the electability question, at least on the Republican side, when voters were asked,
are you, do you care, on the list of things that you care about, that your candidate,
whoever you vote for, wins this presidency?
And that actually ranked pretty low for them.
DEWICK: Yes, well I think they're very dedicated to whatever candidates that they're for.
I know a lot of Democrats that I know personally have voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary
and said, but yes, I would vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election.
The thing about Donald Trump though, he's just very polarizing, and there's things he's
said about immigrants and various other things that there are certain people, even, one quarter
of Republicans in New York, according to the exit polls, who would not vote for him if
he were the Republican Party candidate.
SREENIVASAN: And this is where Kasich has this opportunity.
You see that playing out in the numbers as well.
JACOBS: Right.
It sounds like Kasich might have come in second place here, but the exit polls, they asked,
is this a vote for your candidate or against your opponent, and 42 percent of the people
who voted for Kasich said they were voting against someone else.
With Donald Trump, he still is the presumptive nominee at this point, although it's unclear
whether he's going to get to that necessary magic delegate number, but I've heard a lot
of Republicans say he's got this Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde thing going on.
They're never sure which candidate they're going to get, but he's gone what, two weeks
now without a gaffe, so it's possible he's turned the corner.
SREENIVASAN: Well, he also, in the numbers, he won across all educational backgrounds,
all income levels, all ideologies -- this was a clean sweep in any way you wanted to
measure --
JACOBS: This is New York State showing him some love, and this is the state that knows
him the best, so he survived the pressure cooker of all those tabloid newspaper headlines,
they know all his flaws, and yet they're still coming out and saying, we really love this
guy.
SREENIVASAN: And Karen Dewick, so far the -- go ahead.
DEWICK: Yes, I was going to say, I think it shows that there's less of a chance now of
a brokered convention.
We've just heard so much about that on the news channels and it looks like with this
win, it seems a little bit less likely that that's going to happen, and maybe he will
reach his magic delegate number of 1,237, which I think everybody in politics knows
that number by now.
SREENIVASAN: All right, Karen Dewick, capital bureau chief of New York State Public Radio,
and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg Politics.
Thanks so much.
JACOBS: Thank you.
SREENIVASAN: And again, updating our top story, the results in the New York presidential primary.
The Associated Press now projects Hillary Clinton has defeated Bernie Sanders in the
Democratic contest, and Donald Trump is the projected winner on the Republican side.
A short time ago, Trump emerged at his headquarters in Manhattan's Trump Tower to claim his victory.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
TRUMP: All over New York State, we went to Syracuse, we went to Albany, 20,000 people.
You know on average, we'd have 15,000 to 20,000 people.
We went to Rochester, we went to Beth Page, we went all over, and you know what, the people
of this country and the people of this state truly are great and amazing people.
We are going to be so strong again, we are going to be, really, I mean -- legitimately
-- so great again, and I just can't wait.