The Anderson Observer

Super Tuesday is likely to live up to its billing for Donald Trump.

The first day of multiple-state voting looms large in a wild presidential race after early states trimmed the field and the brash billionaire and his army of outsider voters are positioned to send panic through the Republican establishment by tightening his grip on the party's nomination.

Hillary Clinton -- boosted by her huge win in South Carolina on Saturday -- is meanwhile hoping to start locking out her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, who is giving her a tougher-than-expected challenge, by showing the strength of the Southern foundation of minority voters on which her campaign is built.

Both Trump and Clinton head into the most important day yet in the 2016 election dominating their respective races. A CNN/ORC national poll out Monday shows Trump getting 49% of the Republican primary vote -- 30 percentage points ahead of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. On the Democratic side, Clinton tops Sanders 55% to 38%.

The billionaire is, however, struggling to shake off a controversy after he failed to disavow former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke during an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. Trump blamed a bad earpiece for the oversight, and he has at other times disavowed Duke, but his rivals were quick to seize on the incident to suggest that he is unfit to be the Republican nominee.

Rubio said the remarks prove that the former reality show star is "unelectable."

"I don't care how bad the earpiece is, Ku Klux Klan comes through pretty clearly," Rubio said during a rally in Tennessee Monday.

Fellow GOP opponent John Kasick also disavowed White supremacists on CNN Monday when asked about Trump's response.

"I don't know what's in his head," the Ohio governor told New Day's Alisyn Camerota. "All I know is that white supremacist groups have no place in our society and clearly not in the Republican Party."

Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney also chimed in on Monday.

"A disqualifying & disgusting response by @realDonaldTrump to the KKK. His coddling of repugnant bigotry is not in the character of America," tweeted Romney, who has been actively hitting Trump for days.

The contests on Tuesday, across 12 states, herald several weeks of nationwide skirmishes that will be decisive in determining who gets to face off for the White House in the fall.

The sheer scale of the battlefield favors Trump, whose ubiquitous media profile means he is known everywhere, and Clinton, whose decades in public life give her an advantage over the lesser-known Sanders.

Republican Dr. Ben Carson announced he was running for President during a speech May 2 to thousands in Detroit. The retired neurosurgeon and surprise conservative star had been exploring the idea of running for a few months before the announcement.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich joined the Republican field July 21 as he formally announced his White House bid.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, announced his run in an email to supporters on April 30. He has said the United States needs a "political revolution" of working-class Americans to take back control of the government from billionaires.

"This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires, their super PACs and their lobbyists," Sanders said at a rally in Vermont on May 26.

A total of 595 Republican delegates are up for grabs of the 1,237 needed to clinch the GOP nomination. Sanders and Clinton are facing off for 865 of the 2,383 delegates needed to win the Democratic race.

Republicans are competing for delegates to be awarded Tuesday in Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.

Democrats will award delegates in the same states as Republicans, apart from Alaska, and they are also competing in Colorado and in American Samoa.