BOSTON—Hillary and Bill Clinton crisscrossed Massachusetts on Monday, and Sen. Bernie Sanders made one last pitch in the state, in a set of appearances that showed the practical and symbolic importance of the voting here on Super Tuesday. 
 
 Mr. Sanders needs a win in Massachusetts to dent Mrs. Clinton’s momentum and counterbalance the victories she is expected to secure in the South. In contesting a state that borders Mr. Sanders’s... ||||| Texas primary 222 delegates (145 district, 77 statewide) 
 
 Another Southern state, another likely Clinton win — though her margin of victory may be smaller in Texas than elsewhere in the South. Texas has fewer black voters and a lot of white liberals around Austin, which could help Sanders. Still, black voters were a higher share of the Democratic electorate in Texas in 2008 than they have been this year in any state that has voted so far besides South Carolina. The Lone Star State will be an interesting test of how much Sanders has improved his standing among Hispanics. If it’s a lot, the contest in Texas may be closer than expected. If not, Clinton will probably win easily. One interesting side note: Although delegates are usually awarded proportionally on the state and congressional district level in Democratic contests, they will be awarded proportionally on the state and state Senate district level in Texas. ||||| Tuesday marks a crossroads for Ted Cruz’s presidential ambitions, one at which his 2016 campaign will be either bolstered or buried — and whatever the outcome, it’s a moment entirely of his own making. 
 
 On August 7, the day after a sprawling 17-person Republican field debated for the first time in Cleveland, most of the candidates decamped to familiar territory on the campaign trail. Some went to Iowa, others to New Hampshire. 
 
 But Cruz went to South Carolina. He held a rally there in the afternoon, and then hopped on a bus heading South to make two stops in Georgia that evening. He spent the entire next day there, appearing in three different cities. On Sunday he zigzagged across Alabama, again hitting three cities and holding three different events. He did the same in Tennessee on Monday, Mississippi on Tuesday, Arkansas on Wednesday, and Oklahoma on Thursday. 
 
 This was an exercise in “narrative setting,” as Cruz’s lieutenants like to say. They had long ago circled March 1 as the most important day on the primary calendar, and hoped to impress on the political class two interconnected realities: That the southern states voting that day would play an outsize role in selecting the GOP nominee, and that Cruz was uniquely positioned to win them. 
 
 Since launching his White House bid, Cruz had spoken boldly of merging the party’s Evangelical and tea-party contingents into a grassroots, anti-establishment movement behind his candidacy. Iowa was an obvious place to test this strategy’s feasibility; the problem, as of early August, was that at least five other candidates were staking their campaigns to the Hawkeye State. Moreover, winning there would mean nothing without a serious organization in the states voting on Super Tuesday and beyond, as Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum learned the hard way in 2008 and 2012. 
 
 Since launching his White House bid, Cruz had spoken boldly of merging the party’s Evangelical and tea-party contingents into a grassroots, anti-establishment movement. 
 
 It so happened that the 2016 nominating calendar had been drastically reshuffled since 2012. A host of southern states, including Cruz’s native Texas, had banded together and moved their primaries up to March 1 to maximize the region’s influence. These southern states, many of which had gone ignored in past primary cycles, were now part of a crucial “SEC primary” — named after the powerhouse college-football conference — and their religious, ultra-conservative electorates seemed ripe picking for Cruz’s campaign. Eager to prove his strength in what his campaign called “Cruz Country,” and to establish an expectation that he would remain viable even without a win before March 1, the Texas senator embarked on a seven-day, seven-state bus tour through the South. 
 
 The good news: The campaign’s “narrative setting” worked. Hordes of media trailed Cruz that week, analyzing the intersection of his campaign’s operational theory and a southern-dominated Super Tuesday. Cruz was all too happy to play along, boasting to reporters on his bus of his ideological and religious compatibility with the region’s voters. It wasn’t a one-off trip, either. Cruz returned time and again, including later that month, where during an hour-long ride from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham he argued that he was the only candidate paying attention to the South. “We went from South Carolina to Georgia to Alabama to Tennessee to Mississippi to Arkansas to Oklahoma,” he told me. “We had over 19,000 people come out on that bus tour. It was standing-room-only everywhere we went.” 
 
 The bad news: The campaign’s “narrative setting” worked too well. Cruz’s conspicuous travel schedule was meant to establish his viability as a national candidate capable of competing beyond the first four states, and as a force to be reckoned with in the South. But it had the effect — aided by early exits from regional-friendly candidates such as Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal, not to mention Huckabee’s struggles throughout — of overinflating expectations for Cruz on Super Tuesday, to the point where a poor showing would shatter his candidacy. Cruz himself, the week he launched his August bus tour, told conservative donors in California that the SEC primary would be his “firewall.” And just days before Iowa’s caucuses, one Cruz official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss strategy, said: “We’ve never said we needed to win Iowa. We’ve said we need to perform well in the first four states. I’ve always said we’re going to win March 1st. Just because, well, we are. Not because I want us to, but because we almost can’t help but win March 1st.” 
 
 In fact, Cruz did win Iowa, which was desperately needed no matter what his advisers told the press. And his campaign seemed more viable than ever after a strong third-place showing in New Hampshire, a state whose ideological makeup is hardly conducive to Cruz’s brand of conservatism. 
 
 RELATED: Ted Cruz’s Long Road to Iowa Victory 
 
 But then came South Carolina. All of the pressure there should have been on Marco Rubio, who was reeling after a disastrous fifth-place finish in New Hampshire. Instead it was Cruz who needed to prove himself, thanks to his boasts of a monopoly on the March 1 states that South Carolina so closely resembles. 
 
 Cruz, of course, fell short in that February 20 primary. Trump beat him by ten points, and Rubio narrowly overtook him for second. Most damaging of all, Cruz lost the Evangelical vote to Trump by six points, according to exit polls, and topped Rubio with that group by only five points. Cruz’s Iowa victory less than three weeks earlier suddenly seemed inconsequential. As the South Carolina results came in, pundits piled on with some variation of the same question: If Cruz had managed only a third-place finish in a southern state where 72 percent of Republican voters identified as born-again Christians, how could he hope to win on Super Tuesday? 
 
 “It does definitely put a dent into the manufactured reputation that Cruz is coalescing all conservatives,” Hogan Gidley, a South Carolina–based strategist and veteran of the Huckabee campaign, told NRO of his home state’s result. “I think we can put an end to that myth.” 
 
 The same questions and concerns were being shared 3,000 miles away, inside a resort overlooking the San Diego Bay, at a meeting of the Council for National Policy. That group, which serves as an umbrella organization for conservative activists from around the country, had largely been supportive of Cruz’s candidacy, though a vocal minority of its members backed Rubio. The South Carolina result sent shock waves through the gathering. Some of Cruz’s key supporters, watching the returns together, confided their concerns to one another — and, as the weekend wore on, to neutral attendees. 
 
 Things suddenly looked shaky. Trump, whom Cruz supporters openly fear and despise, emerged from South Carolina as the clear frontrunner for the nomination. Meanwhile, Cruz was bleeding Evangelical support to Rubio, who appealed to a far broader swath of the electorate, according to exit polls. These twin dynamics so unsettled some Cruz supporters that they held a private call preparing for a scenario they couldn’t have imagined just three weeks earlier: Defecting from Cruz if he collapsed on March 1, and throwing their support to Rubio in a last-ditch effort to defeat Trump. 
 
 RELATED: Conservative Leaders Hedge on Support for Cruz 
 
 The biggest concern was Texas. All of the March 1 states allocate their delegates proportionally, meaning Cruz could stay competitive in the delegate race even if Trump finishes first in most places. But Cruz’s allies feared he could not survive the optics of losing his home state — something his team readily acknowledged amid the mounting nerves as South Carolina’s returns came in. “I think we have to win Texas, absolutely,” Cruz’s then–communications director Rick Tyler said on CNN. 
 
 In the face of all this anxiety, it’s easy to forget that Cruz is exactly where he wanted to be: heading into Super Tuesday as one of a few remaining viable candidates, with the strongest field operation in a majority of the day’s eleven states. For all the talk that March 1 could mark the end of Cruz’s campaign — and it certainly could — it’s also true that no date on the calendar is likelier to restore momentum to his candidacy. 
 
 In the face of all this anxiety, it’s easy to forget that Cruz is exactly where he wanted to be: heading into Super Tuesday as one of a few remaining viable candidates. 
 
 Cruz has his work cut out for him, however, after a week spent battling the perception that his campaign is in decline. More bad news came Sunday night, when Jeff Sessions, the Alabama senator and immigration hardliner whom Cruz often cites as a close ally, unexpectedly endorsed Trump during a rally in Madison. It’s a significant blow to Cruz, who has invested significant time and resources in the state while tirelessly courting Sessions’s endorsement, only to fall short of selling the senator on his campaign’s viability. 
 
 With many of Tuesday’s states expected to split delegates evenly between the top three candidates, Cruz’s primary focus is Texas, easily the night’s biggest delegate prize. Any candidate topping the 20 percent threshold statewide will receive a proportional share of the 44 at-large delegates, while 108 additional delegates will be awarded to the winners (and potential runners-up, if they top 20 percent) in each of the state’s 36 congressional districts. Cruz’s team is confident he will break those thresholds, both statewide and in all of the state’s congressional districts, making it mathematically improbable for Trump to either win more popular votes or to walk away from the state with more delegates. 
 
 RELATED: Ted Cruz Has Two Big Problems 
 
 Either scenario could be framed as a loss. Cruz’s team recognizes as much and has dismissed polls showing Trump closing on them in the Lone Star State. Yet they’ve been forced into a defensive position: Cruz will spend the entirety of Monday campaigning across his home state, precious time that could have been spent elsewhere had Texas truly been in the bag. It’s not ideal, but it’s the safe play: Cruz’s campaign could go on life support without multiple wins on Tuesday, but it would be dead without carrying Texas. 
 
 The urgency was apparent during Thursday’s debate in Cruz’s hometown of Houston, where he teamed with Rubio to finally execute a start-to-finish assault on Trump. Cruz carried that over into a weekend spent barnstorming across the Bible Belt, pleading with voters — in notably dire tones — to bring their friends and families to the polls Tuesday in opposition to Trump. “Say, ‘This is my future, this is my kids, this is my grandkids, this is my country, damn it! My country!’” Cruz shouted in Georgia Saturday night. “Stand up and fight for it together!” 
 
 The moment spoke for itself. Cruz’s entire campaign has been building to March 1, and now, in the face of a make-or-break moment, he’s doing nothing to lower expectations. “Super Tuesday is the most important day of this entire primary election,” he told Face the Nation on Sunday. 
 
 Cruz has the home-field advantage in Texas. And he has built superior ground operations in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. On the heels of Cruz’s victory in Iowa, the SEC primary seemed a safe bet to accelerate his momentum and make him the delegate frontrunner. Now, he needs the South just to keep his campaign alive — and to validate his all-in approach to Super Tuesday. 
 
 — Tim Alberta is the chief political correspondent for National Review. ||||| Democrats must do everything they can to prevent Donald Trump’s nomination—like supporting the one man with a chance to beat him. 
 
 Marco Rubio would be a terrible president. His tax proposals make George W. Bush look fiscally prudent. He acts as if America can use sanctions, war, or the threat of war to bludgeon its adversaries into submission despite the devastating failure of that approach since 9/11. He has been dishonest and gutless on immigration. He has flirted with climate-change denial even though his hometown now regularly floods. Still, if I lived in any of the nine Super Tuesday states that allow non-Republicans to vote in their GOP presidential primary, I would cross over—forfeiting my chance to cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders—and vote for Rubio. Other liberals should do the same. Those who can should write him checks. Whatever it takes to stop the nomination of Donald Trump. There are three arguments against what I’m proposing. 1. Argument number one is that, from a liberal perspective, Rubio is not the best candidate in the GOP field. John Kasich is. That’s true, but as a vehicle for stopping Trump, Kasich is useless. He has barely any money and barely any campaign infrastructure. He’s only seriously competing in his home state. At this point in the race, only one Republican has the combination of elite and mass support necessary to have even a sliver of a chance of defeating Trump. And it’s Rubio. 
 
 2. Argument number two is that Rubio’s not much better than Trump. On some issues, in fact, he’s worse. Unlike Trump, Rubio does not challenge the logic underlying the Iraq War. Nor will he call America’s campaign-finance system corrupt. Latest from Politics The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: White House Defends Kelly’s Defense But as important as these issues are, there’s a more fundamental difference between the two candidates. Rubio respects the Constitution, and in particular, the Bill of Rights. Trump does not. Trump does not threaten American democracy. He is not trying to deny Americans the right to choose their leaders. But he does threaten American liberal democracy, the idea that there are certain rights so fundamental that even democratic majorities cannot undo them. Trump is not subverting public opinion. He’s exploiting and fomenting its basest aspects. In deciding how much to appeal to the public’s most hateful and bloodthirsty desires, most politicians exercise a measure of restraint born in part from a respect for legal norms and individual rights. Trump calls this restraint “political correctness” and flaunts his disdain. I doubt Trump is the first post-9/11 presidential candidate to realize he could rouse a majority of Americans—or at least a majority of Republicans—by calling for the murder of terrorists’ family members and by giving a full-throated endorsement of torture. But the others stopped short. Other Republican presidential candidates have demonized Muslims, but none ever called for banning every single Muslim from entering the country. Other prominent Republicans subtly questioned President Obama’s Americanism. Trump denied he was born in the United States. 
 
 The difference is shame. It’s vaguely possible to imagine another Republican candidate launching the canard about Muslims celebrating 9/11. But only Trump—despite a thousand fact checks proving him wrong—would double down on the claim. Other Republicans have played on the right’s hatred of the mainstream press. But only Trump calls for changing libel laws to make it harder for journalists to write critical stories about him. And only Trump openly threatens the donors who fund efforts to defeat his campaign. It’s no coincidence that Trump has praised Vladimir Putin. Although Trump probably couldn’t get away with everything the Russian leader has done, a Trump presidency could move the United States in the direction of what Fareed Zakaria calls “illiberal democracy.” Americans would still elect their presidents, but those presidents, once chosen, would face fewer restraints on their power and be free to more severely curtail the rights of targeted groups. Many of those restraints, after all, are a matter of convention. We can’t know how robust they are until someone challenges them. Trump will challenge them in ways Rubio will not. Once Trump is nominated, America will have crossed a line. 3. The third argument against liberals supporting Rubio is that America will benefit if Trump destroys the Republican Party. If the GOP splits, or loses massively this fall, then perhaps moderates will regain influence and the Republican Party—or whatever supplants it—will stop denying climate change, stop refusing to vote on judges, and stop pushing the United States to the brink of financial default. Maybe as a result of Trump, the party’s “fever may break.” I understand the argument’s allure, but it’s reckless. Although it’s highly likely Trump would lose a general election, there are no guarantees. Hillary Clinton could be indicted. Terrorists could strike two days before Americans head out to vote. If nothing else, the course of the presidential race so far should instill a healthy modesty in anyone inclined to make blanket assertions about what will happen in six months. ||||| 
 
 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks about the upcoming Super Tuesday elections on arrival in Boston on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) 
 
 BOSTON -- On the eve of Super Tuesday, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders took a jab at rival Hillary Clinton for the “substantial sums” a super PAC supporting her has collected from corporate interests and reiterated his plans to stay in the race until voters in all 50 states have spoken. 
 
 Clinton and Sanders will face off in primaries and caucuses in 11 states on a day when more delegates are up for grabs than on any other single day in the Democratic nominating calendar. 
 
 Speaking to reporters beside his chartered jet here, Sanders seemed to be lowering expectations by relaying what he is up against in a candidate with far more support from elected officeholders. 
 
 “Tomorrow, all over the country our campaign is taking on the political establishment,” the Vermont senator said. “We’re taking on governors and senators and mayors who know how to get out the vote. They do that very well.” 
 
 “We will do well tomorrow if there is a large voter turnout, if working people, if young people, if people in many cases who have given up on the political process want to stand up and fight back and they come out to vote tomorrow,” Sanders said. 
 
 Sanders said he thinks he has a chance to do well in five of the states he has visited in recent days: Oklahoma, Minnesota, Colorado, Massachusetts and his home state of Vermont. 
 
 He also cited large turnouts at a pair of rallies Saturday in Texas and said, “I think we’ll do better there than people think.” 
 
 Asked about previous statements to stay in the race through the Democratic convention, Sanders noted that only four states have weighed in to this point. 
 
 “At the end of tomorrow, I think 15 states will have spoken,” Sanders said. “Last I heard, we have a lot more than 15 states in the United States of America, and I think it is more than appropriate to give all of those states and the people in those states a chance to vote for the candidate of their choice.” 
 
 Sanders also cited Sunday night’s Oscar speech by Adam McKay, winner of best adapted screenplay for “The Big Short,” to take a poke at Clinton. McKay, whose film focused on Wall Street excesses, warned viewers not to vote for candidates “who take money from big banks, big oil or weirdo billionaires.” 
 
 “Our country faces as you all know very serious problems, and as Adam McKay pointed out at the Oscars last night if we want to have a government that is not controlled by billionaires, we should not be voting for candidates who receive substantial sums of money from the wealthy, from Wall Street, from the pharmaceutical industry, from the fossil fuel industry,” Sanders said. 
 
 While Sanders said he has “a lot of respect” for Clinton, he questioned the influence of a super PAC supporting her, as he has done routinely in recent campaign speeches. 
 
 “I don’t think real change comes about when your super PAC raises many millions of dollars from Wall Street, from the drug companies, from the fossil fuel industries,” Sanders said. “Real change comes about when millions of people, working people, middle-class people, young people stand up and represent a government that represents all of us and not just the 1 percent.” ||||| The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are charging into Super Tuesday in a coast-to-coast battle for delegates across a dozen states -- but while they're looking for as many wins as possible, a few select states stand out as the crown jewels. 
 
 At the top of that list, in both primary contests, is Texas. The Lone Star State has the biggest cache -- 222 Democratic delegates and 155 for Republicans. 
 
 And perhaps no candidate is fighting harder for that prize than Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. The senator went all out on Monday, holding rallies in voter-rich Dallas, Houston and San Antonio in hopes of at least defeating national front-runner Donald Trump in Cruz's home state. 
 
 “We are going to have a very good Super Tuesday,” Cruz assured the Dallas crowd. Cruz has maintained a polling lead in the state, but knows a surprise loss there could doom his campaign. 
 
 For Republicans, the second-biggest prize is Georgia, with 76 delegates at stake. Both Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio put in face time with voters Monday in the final hours before polls open, while Cruz stayed rooted in Texas. 
 
 On the Democratic side, too, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have focused their efforts. 
 
 While Clinton declared Saturday night after her decisive win in the South Carolina primary that the campaign was going “national,” the former secretary of state was concentrating Monday on two delegate-heavy states -- the Democratic-stronghold of Massachusetts (91 delegates) and Virginia (95 delegates). 
 
 Solid wins there and beyond on Super Tuesday could give her a nearly insurmountable delegate count toward the nomination. 
 
 Clinton to date leads Sanders in the delegate count 543-to-85, including so-called superdelegates. They will compete for 865 delegates on Tuesday and a total of roughly 1,800 delegates over the next two weeks, with 2,382 needed to win the nomination. 
 
 The delegates on the line in 11 states Tuesday represent a third of those needed to clinch the party nod. 
 
 And on the GOP side, 595 delegates are on the line Tuesday across 11 states -- nearly half the number needed to secure the nomination. 
 
 Sanders is focusing on Minnesota and Colorado, progressive states where he hopes his message of social and economic equality will translate into votes. 
 
 “Americans don’t need crumbs, they need the whole loaf,” Sanders said at a rally in Minneapolis. 
 
 He is expected on Tuesday to win his home state of Vermont, which has 16 Democratic delegates. Minnesota is worth far more, with 77 delegates. 
 
 Still, many of these contests divide delegates proportionally, and so Sanders is poised to walk away with some, even where he loses. His strategy appears to be to at least survive Tuesday, with hopes of a resurgence later this month in Maine and Rust Belt states like Michigan and Ohio. 
 
 On the Republican side, Trump has won three straight -- the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, and the Nevada Republican Caucus -- garnering 82 delegates. 
 
 Cruz kicked off the 2016 balloting by winning the Iowa Republican Caucus. He has 17 delegates, ahead of Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio with 16. 
 
 Though trailing in Texas, Trump holds big leads in other delegate-rich Super Tuesday states. 
 
 The billionaire businessman leads by double-digits in Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia, according to RealClearPolitics poll averages. Roughly 53 percent of the GOP’s 595 delegates on Tuesday are in those states. 
 
 Those polls were released before Trump over the weekend initially declined to disavow the backing of former KKK leader David Duke, which Rubio says makes him “unelectable.” 
 
 Trump has since disavowed the support and blamed his original handling of the question on a faulty earpiece. 
 
 The tough race is taking a toll on the candidates. Rubio, barnstorming the South to take hold of the GOP establishment mantle, temporarily lost his voice at a rally outside of Atlanta and needed South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has endorsed him, to take the microphone. 
 
 The two other GOP candidates, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, have six and four delegates, respectively. ||||| WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand may be thousands of miles from the U.S. presidential campaign trail but local Democratic Party supporters could boast about being the first in the world to cast ballots in multi-state primaries dubbed "Super Tuesday" — and in a bar, no less. 
 
 American voters living in Wellington and registered as Democrats voted just after midnight early Tuesday local time, almost a day ahead of compatriots back home. In keeping with the South Pacific nation's informal style, the votes, all 28 of them, were cast in local drinking spot, the Public Bar and Eatery. 
 
 Handily winning the day in New Zealand was Sen. Bernie Sanders, who picked up 21 votes, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got six. One ballot was spoiled. The results will be confirmed later this month at the global voter tally center in Germany. 
 
 Wellington is the first of 111 cities in 41 countries outside the U.S. to cast ballots in the primary for Democrats abroad. Republicans living overseas won't be able to do the same because the party doesn't have a similar mechanism for its supporters to vote in primaries. 
 
 So far, four states have held primaries or caucuses to choose each party's nominee in November's presidential election. On Tuesday, Democrats will be voting in 11 states and American Samoa, with 865 delegates at stake. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the party's nomination. Democrats abroad are allocated 17 of those delegates. 
 
 Republicans, meanwhile, will be voting in 11 states on Super Tuesday, with 595 delegates at stake toward the 1,237 delegates needed to capture the party's nomination. 
 
 Americans living in New Zealand include students, people with specialized jobs, and retirees, said Kat Allikian, chair of the Democrats Abroad New Zealand. 
 
 She said a big motivation for local voters was to stop Republicans winning the White House — in particular, leading candidate Donald Trump. 
 
 "The overwhelming concern of all Democrats overseas is this Trump phenomenon that is happening on the Republican side," she said. "It's mindboggling that he's running away with the nomination. Although it's not set yet." 
 
 Allikian said it was an honor to lead the vote among those living overseas. 
 
 "People are really tickled that we're the very first in the world," she said. ||||| As the calendar flips, March brings a whirlwind of states voting on the same days and in quick succession. By the middle of the month, 58 percent of the total delegates will have been awarded, and Mr. Trump could be unstoppable in getting the 1,237 needed to clinch the nomination. 
 
 With the exception of Texas, the home state of Senator Ted Cruz, recent polls show Mr. Trump leading in the so-called Super Tuesday states that vote this week, including Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts and Virginia. Though Texas has the most delegates of states voting on Tuesday, 155, they all award delegates proportionally, so that Mr. Cruz will most likely have to share the haul. 
 
 The Southern states, with many evangelical Christians, have been the linchpin of Mr. Cruz’s strategy. But after Mr. Trump trounced him in South Carolina on Feb. 20, winning all 50 delegates, Mr. Cruz’s prospects are not as bright. Mr. Trump carries “enormous momentum,” Mr. Cruz admitted on Friday, and if he sweeps Super Tuesday, when more delegates are awarded than on any other day, “he could easily be unstoppable.” 
 
 For Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who ferociously challenged Mr. Trump last week in a debate and on the stump, mocking the real estate mogul’s “spray tan” and calling him a “con man,” the path forward is narrowing. ||||| Donald Trump is poised for sweeping nationwide wins on Super Tuesday, solidifying his position as the Republican front-runner and intensifying the pressure on his struggling primary rivals to find a way forward. 
 
 Top Republicans — including governors who convened an emergency conference call on Monday on which Trump was Topic A — expect the real estate mogul to carry as many as 10 states on Tuesday night, an outcome that would deal a body blow to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has staked his campaign heavily on the Southern states holding nominating contests, and to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has yet to win a primary and isn’t expected to do so on Tuesday. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 “If Trump wins 8 or more states on Tuesday, it would take a massive collapse on his and/or his campaign’s part for him not to be the nominee,” said Tony Fabrizio, a longtime GOP pollster and strategist who advised Rand Paul. 
 
 Trump’s march to the nomination has set off a wave of anxiety across the Republican Party establishment as top officials weigh whether to endorse him — or denounce him as anathema to the party's values. Reflecting that angst, on Monday morning, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the heads of the Republican Governors Association, convened fellow governors for an unusual conference call to discuss how the primary was unfolding — and Trump was a central topic of conversation. 
 
 At one point during Monday’s call, which lasted around 30 minutes, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to discuss last week’s bombshell decision to back Trump. According to two sources familiar with the call, Christie mounted a detailed defense of his endorsement, explaining that he’d known the real estate executive for over a decade and had grown confident in his ability to lead the country. 
 
 The stakes on Tuesday are perhaps highest for Cruz, who had once hoped to establish a stranglehold on Super Tuesday, carefully tailoring his evangelical image to the conservative states that are voting that day and campaigning heavily in towns throughout Tennessee and Oklahoma. He has described March 1 as the most important day of the Republican primary calendar. 
 
 Yet, with Trump rampaging throughout the South, it’s now possible that Cruz will only emerge with a win in his home state of Texas, a contest the senator has begun likening to the Alamo. Trump has made deep inroads into Cruz’s evangelical base, portraying himself as a steadfast Christian while casting Cruz as “the single biggest liar I’ve ever seen.” Jerry Falwell Jr., an influential evangelical leader and Trump supporter, has recorded a robo-call for the Trump campaign which is being sent to households throughout Virginia. In the call, Falwell, the president of Liberty University, tears into Cruz and accuses him – four times – of using “dirty tricks.” 
 
 “Politicians can’t wait to tell us about their values, but I care more about the choices they make when no one is looking,” Falwell says in the call. “Ambition must never be a substitute for character. Please vote for Donald Trump.” 
 
 The Cruz campaign has not yet released its post-Super Tuesday schedule. But in the immediate days ahead, Cruz is likely to campaign heavily in a trio of deeply conservative states – Idaho, Louisiana, and Kansas – that hold their nominating contests over the next week. 
 
 Rubio, meanwhile, will immediately pivot to his home state of Florida, where he will spend much of his time ahead of the do-or-die March 15 primary. With polls showing him badly trailing Trump, Rubio is expected to launch an all-out effort to win the state, where a defeat could be fatal. His top aides have vowed in unequivocal terms that they will not lose Florida, which awards its 99 delegates on a winner-take-all basis. 
 
 Rubio’s planning for the Florida primary has been long in the works. He recently dispatched Clint Reed, a former Republican National Committee political director, to Florida help guide his efforts to secure his home state, according to two sources familiar with the move. Reed also played key roles for Rubio in Iowa and South Carolina. 
 
 Rubio’s aides are convening top donors to a national finance meeting to coincide with the March 9 debate in Miami. On March 10 and March 11, he will embark on a fundraising tour that will take him to Palm Beach, Naples, and Ocean Reef. One of the events will be held at the home of Gerald and Darlene Jordan, prominent South Florida socialites who were major benefactors to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. 
 
 No matter what happens on Tuesday, Cruz and Rubio’s allies point out, Trump will be nowhere close to securing the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination. The 595 delegates up for grabs will be distributed proportionately, meaning that Cruz and Rubio are expected to rack up a substantial number even if they do not succeed in winning many states. Going into Super Tuesday, Trump has won 82 of the 133 delegates that have been awarded so far. 
 
 That means the primary race could well go on for weeks or months longer without any candidate meeting the threshold for securing the nomination. 
 
 “Donald Trump is the clear front-runner, and he’s in a very strong position,” said Steve Munisteri, a former Texas Republican chairman who has closely studied the delegate allocation process. “But it’s not over.” 
 
 Yet there’s little question that the structural dynamics of the primary favor Trump. Assuming he wins most of the states voting on Super Tuesday and his rivals choose to stay in the contest, Trump will be the beneficiary of two major advantages: a lead in the delegate count, and a splintered Republican field. 
 
 With Rubio likely to be blown out on Tuesday, his allies are latching on to the notion that he could still keep Trump from amassing a majority of delegates and then win over party insiders at the convention in Cleveland, securing the nomination at the 11th hour. 
 
 “There is a very narrow way forward,” conceded Mel Martinez, a former Republican National Committee chairman and past Florida senator who endorsed Rubio on Monday. 
 
 But, Martinez said, there was hope. A majority of the party, he argued, found Trump “increasingly unpalatable,” and they would resist him. 
 
 “How that manifests itself I don’t know, but I believe there is a sense by many, myself included, that he just cannot be the nominee,” he said. “So a convention scenario could begin to develop.” 
 
 Speaking to reporters on Monday, Cruz ridiculed the idea. “All these crazy voters go one way, we’ll step in with all of our money and anoint our white knight to ride in and save the day … That’s not going to happen.” 
 
 The growing ranks of forces looking for ways to stop Trump insist they haven’t lost hope. Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump super PAC being overseen by former Mitt Romney aide Katie Packer, has launched an aggressive fundraising campaign and is eyeing the possibility of launching ad campaigns against him in four delegate-rich states voting in March: Michigan, Missouri, Illinois, and Florida. 
 
 The group, which has tapped veteran Republican strategist Ed Goeas to conduct polling, has secured donations by a number of prominent Republican Party contributors, including Marlene Ricketts, part of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs, and Stan Hubbard, a broadcasting executive. 
 
 “I don’t think the opposition to Trump is going quietly into the night anytime soon,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The vast majority of Republicans are horribly dissatisfied with the current state of affairs and there is no sign whatsoever that fundraising or energy is dissipating for an alternative.” 
 
 Some in Rubio’s campaign have privately expressed their frustration that prominent members of the party establishment have yet to gravitate to him. While Romney and Jeb Bush have been loud critics of Trump, neither has endorsed the Florida senator – nods that would open up veins of fundraising dollars and help Rubio consolidate the party around him. 
 
 While many of Bush’s backers have announced their support for Rubio since the former Florida governor dropped out of the race, others have remained on the sidelines. 
 
 One top Bush donor — Mel Sembler, a Florida real estate developer and former ambassador to Italy – declined in an email exchange to say whether he’d support Rubio. He said he was focused on defeating a medical marijuana initiative and “recovering from Jeb’s withdrawal.” 
 
 A few Bush backers are throwing their support elsewhere. In a telephone interview on Monday, Doug Ose, a wealthy former Republican member of Congress who fundraised for Bush, said he was endorsing Trump. Ose, who represented California’s Central Valley for three terms and hails from the mainstream wing of the GOP, said he viewed Trump as a problem solver and that he’d been turned off by what he described as the increasingly negative tone of Rubio’s campaign. 
 
 “I actually think Senator Rubio 10 years from now is going to be our guy,” the former congressman said. “I hope he doesn’t do damage to himself.” 
 
 Authors: ||||| NASCAR Driver Chase Elliott, accompanied by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, and NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France, second from left, speaks at a Trump rally at Valdosta State... (Associated Press) 
 
 NASCAR Driver Chase Elliott, accompanied by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, and NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France, second from left, speaks at a Trump rally at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Ga., Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — A quarter of Americans get their say in the presidential nominating races on Super Tuesday, sounding off with a giant megaphone. 
 
 The two front-runners, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, hope Super Tuesday is definitive for them — signaling the inevitability of their march toward the party nominations. 
 
 Clinton challenger Bernie Sanders and Trump rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are desperate to drag out the drama a little longer. 
 
 A guide on what to watch for as voters in a dozen states register their preferences Tuesday night: 
 
 THE TIMELINE 
 
 If vote margins aren't too tight, expect rolling waves of race calls as polls close in various states: Georgia, Virginia and Vermont at 7 p.m. EST; Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Massachusetts at 8 p.m.; Arkansas at 8:30 p.m.; Texas, Minnesota and Colorado at 9 p.m.; Alaska at midnight. A big chunk of the electorate votes early in Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, and those early votes will show up quickly in the count, increasing the chances for fast calls in those states. Sorry Sanders, your home state of Vermont tends to be slow to report. And Minnesota, Colorado and Alaska are caucus states that could experience more hiccups than state-run primary states. 
 
 Caucuses are local meetings of registered party members organized by the state party. Primaries, on the other hand, are run by the state government and are done by secret ballot at polling stations, similar to the general election. 
 
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 DEMOCRATIC DEMOGRAPHICS 
 
 Watch how Clinton does with minority voters across the South and beyond. If she can replicate the resounding support that she got from black voters in South Carolina, where she was favored by 9 in 10 African Americans, she'll be well situated to nail the nomination. Watch how Sanders does among young-ish voters — not just the youngest. He lost every age group but the under-30 crowd in South Carolina, which is not a big enough slice of the population to get him to a balloon drop at the Democratic Convention. 
 
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 CRUZ'S CROWN JEWEL 
 
 It's all about Texas for Cruz. After three straight third-place finishes in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the Texas senator most likely couldn't survive a Super Tuesday embarrassment on his home turf. A big chunk of that Texas vote already is just waiting to be counted: More than 1.7 million voters cast early ballots in the state, representing 12 percent of registered voters in the two parties and about 7 percent of registered Republicans. Even if Cruz wins the state, he's not guaranteed all 155 GOP delegates; the state awards them proportionally. 
 
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 SILVER LININGS 
 
 With Trump poised for a big Republican delegate haul, his GOP rivals will be searching for any shreds of encouraging news to justify remaining in the race. Can Rubio point to increased margins of support even if he doesn't win anywhere? Will Cruz be celebrating increased strength among evangelicals, from whom Trump has been siphoning support? Can also-rans John Kasich and Ben Carson find anything — seriously, anything — to smile about? 
 
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 SOUTHERN COMFORT 
 
 With seven Southern states casting ballots, it's time to see if Clinton can erect the much-talked-of southern firewall. If Sanders can't show strength beyond his Northeast home base in Vermont and neighboring Massachusetts, he'll know he's in big trouble. 
 
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 GOING GENERAL? 
 
 Check out the election-night speeches by Clinton and Trump. Do they pivot from their primary election rivals and point themselves toward a potential general-election matchup? 
 
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 SOFT SPOTS 
 
 Exit poll data will offer fresh clues about the candidates' potential soft spots. Does Clinton continue to have trouble with voters who place a premium on honesty? Does Trump keep falling short of Rubio among GOP voters who want a candidate who can win in November? 
 
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 THE MATH 
 
 In the end, it's all about the delegates. And about a quarter of them, awarded proportionally, are decided on Super Tuesday. Trump came into Super Tuesday with 82, Cruz, 18, Rubio 16, Kasich 6 and Carson 4. It takes 1,237 to win the GOP nomination. Clinton entered Super Tuesday with 546 delegates — including superdelegates, the party leaders and members of Congress who can support any candidate. Sanders had 87. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination 
 
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 AP Writers Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington and Will Weissert in Houston contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac
– Super Tuesday is upon us—and it could be the day that changes the Republican Party forever. With 11 states holding GOP primaries and caucuses, rival candidates are doing their best to dent Donald Trump, but the party establishment fears that the time when his candidacy could be stopped is already in the past. On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will battle for 11 states plus American Samoa, and analysts say it will require victory in a few close-run contests for Sanders to keep his candidacy afloat. A roundup of coverage: FiveThirtyEight has a detailed guide to every state voting in the Republican and Democratic contests, including poll numbers—which suggest both front-runners are headed toward huge wins. With Trump poised to win up to 10 states, Politico looks at how his momentum has split Republican leaders, and at what Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz plan to do in the days ahead. The Wall Street Journal looks at why Massachusetts will be a must-win for Bernie Sanders. The AP has a guide to when results will start rolling in. Caucus states Minnesota, Colorado, and Alaska may experience more hiccups than others. Fox News takes a closer look at the states where victory will be most important, including Texas, the biggest prize and possibly Cruz's only win. It's also primary day for Democrats living overseas. The AP talks to voters in New Zealand, where Super Tuesday arrived first. Politico breaks down five numbers it says will define Super Tuesday, including Rubio's share of the vote in northern Virginia. The Washington Post reports on Sanders' jabs at Clinton on the eve of Super Tuesday. He has vowed to stay in the race until all 50 states have voted. Peter Beinart at the Atlantic has three reasons why liberals in states that allow non-Republicans to vote in GOP primaries should give up their chance to vote for Sanders or Clinton and cast a ballot for Marco Rubio. Today is do or die for Cruz, according to the National Review, which explains how he managed to paint himself into this corner. The New York Times looks at the GOP's revamped delegate selection, designed to "turbocharge the campaign of a front-runner"—and at how it could help Trump wrap things up very quickly.