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 In the Democratic race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
can go a long way toward silencing concerns about her candidacy with
big victories of her own over democratic socialist Bernie Sanders on
Super Tuesday.
Trump was leading in nearly all the states that will hold primary
contests or caucuses, most of them in the American South. The lone
exception appeared to be Texas, where U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who
represents that state, enjoyed a narrow lead and was in desperate
need of a victory.
Super Tuesday is the biggest single day of state-by-state
presidential nominating contests for the Nov. 8 election to succeed
Democratic President Barack Obama.
Trump, a New York real estate developer and former reality TV star,
has defied all expectations with campaign pledges to build a wall
along the U.S. southern border with Mexico and deport 11 million
illegal immigrants.
With a string of victories on Tuesday, he would advance toward
sealing the nomination against opposition from Cruz, U.S. Senator
Marco Rubio of Florida, Ohio Governor John Kasich and retired
neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
 On the eve of voting, Cruz and Rubio called on Trump to ask the New
York Times to release an audiotape of an interview he gave to the
newspaper's editorial board on Jan. 5, which they believe will show
Trump does not back his own immigration policy.. The Trump campaign
had no immediate response.
REPUBLICAN UNEASE
The notion of a Trump victory has alarmed Republican Party leaders,
many of whom do not support his positions and who feel that Clinton
would easily defeat him in November.
Adding to their unease was Trump's reluctance in a CNN interview on
Sunday to disavow an endorsement of him by David Duke, a former
grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group.
On NBC's "Today" show on Monday, Trump blamed a faulty TV earpiece
for his failure to do so, saying: "You could hardly hear what he
(the interviewer) was saying."
The 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, was not
convinced of Trump's sincerity.
"A disqualifying & disgusting response by @realDonaldTrump to the
KKK. His coddling of repugnant bigotry is not in the character of
America," Romney tweeted.
The crossfire between Trump and establishment Republicans threatens
to rip the party apart at a time when it will need to generate
momentum behind a prospective nominee, a prospect that concerns some
Republican strategists looking ahead to the nominating convention in
July.
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"If Trump continues winning, disappointed party elites will need to
reconcile with supporting the party nominee. Ultimately, the party
has always rallied come convention time, and that will be a healing
moment moving forward," said Tim Albrecht, a Republican strategist
in Iowa.
Rubio saw his support increase among Republican voters after a
strong debate performance last week, rising to 20 percent from 14
percent, a Reuters-Ipsos poll found. Trump still dominated the field
with 42 percent support.
CLINTON LEADS IN SOUTH
On the Democratic side, polls show Clinton, who has won three of the
first four Democratic contests, with a big lead in six Southern
states that have large blocs of black voters, who have been slow to
warm to Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont.
Sanders has been aiming for wins in five other states on Tuesday -
Vermont, neighboring Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Minnesota and
Colorado.
One factor helping Clinton is a focus on getting her voters to make
their choices early. More than half the delegates needed to secure
the Democratic nomination will be chosen in March with contests in
28 states, and more than a third of those have early voting.
On a recent afternoon in a municipal building in downtown Augusta,
Georgia, voters popped in to cast early ballots, such as Zekia
Brunson, 33.
“I believe that Bernie Sanders would do a good job, but I believe
more in Clinton,” Brunson said.
(Additional reporting by John Whitesides in Washington and Emily
Stephenson in San Antonio; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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