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 Trump has the potential for a sweep in five big states holding
nominating contests for the Nov. 8 election - Florida, Ohio,
Illinois, North Carolina and Missouri. He could potentially knock
out two of his rivals, Ohio Governor John Kasich and U.S. Senator
Marco Rubio of Florida, if he wins their states.
At a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday night, Trump urged his
followers to get out and vote for him. He planned a news conference
at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday night.
"You're going to be so happy. You're going to remember this evening.
You’re going to say it was the single greatest vote that you ever
cast," he said.
Trump has a significant lead over Rubio in opinion polls in Florida,
but is neck and neck with Kasich in Ohio. Any win by either Rubio,
Kasich or U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas would give at least a small
degree of hope to Republicans battling to deny Trump the nomination.
 But Trump victories in those states could make what once seemed
inconceivable a virtual reality, putting the 69-year-old New York
real estate mogul who has vowed to deport 11 million illegal
immigrants and impose some protectionist trade policies, on a glide
path to representing the Republican Party in the November election.
On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
can put some distance between herself and rival Bernie Sanders, a
U.S. senator from Vermont, in Tuesday's voting.
Opinion polls gave her a big lead in Florida and North Carolina, but
showed Sanders gaining ground in Ohio, Illinois and Missouri, a
possibly worrisome sign for Clinton after Sanders' surprise victory
in Michigan a week ago.
'OPTIMISM OVER PESSIMISM'
Ahead of Tuesday's primaries, Trump held rallies in Florida, Ohio
and North Carolina on Monday and said establishment Republicans who
have labored to stop his outsider candidacy needed to rally to his
cause.
An outbreak of clashes between Trump supporters and protesters that
forced him to cancel a rally in Chicago last Friday, and scattered
protests at some of his campaign events this week have prompted more
concerns from mainstream party figures.
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Their only real hope for stopping Trump is to deny him the 1,237
delegates needed for the nomination and extend the battle to the
party's nominating convention in July in Cleveland.
At a rally on Monday night in West Palm Beach, Rubio, who has been
an establishment favorite, largely tried to return to the
aspirational themes that were central to his campaign before he was
drawn into a war of insults with Trump, something Rubio told the
crowd he now regretted.
“I am asking for your vote, and I am asking you to find more people
to vote for me. I’m asking you to choose optimism over pessimism,”
he said. “If we win Florida tomorrow night, we don’t just get 99
delegates, we get a surge of momentum they will not be able to
stop.”
At the event was Tim Sweetz, 39, of Juno Beach, who said he would
vote for Rubio on Tuesday, even though he believed Trump would be
good for the economy. “What we need is a leader who can unite the
country,” he said.
Kasich reminded Ohio voters of Trump's confrontational campaign
tactics during a final swing through his home state.
"Think of the images that have been broadcast across this world
about how we are picking a president here," Kasich said on Monday,
adding that the footage of protests and violence could be used to
fuel propaganda that America was "broken."
(Additional reporting by James Oliphant in West Palm Beach, Fla.,
and Amanda Becker in Ohio; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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