Ted Cruz quits US presidential race

Senator Ted Cruz is ending his presidential campaign, eliminating the biggest impediment to Donald Trump's march to the Republican nomination.

Cruz's campaign said he plans to drop out of the race Tuesday following his loss in Indiana's Republican primary to Trump.

"From the beginning I've said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory. Tonight, I'm sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed," Cruz said during a Tuesday night speech.

"The voters chose another path, and so with a heavy heart, but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign."

Cruz's campaign placed its hopes on a data-driven effort to turn out conservative evangelical Christians who had opted out of recent presidential elections.

Increasingly, he would modify his travel schedule to go where data showed there might be pockets of untapped supporters.

Trump romps to Indiana win, White House nomination in sight

Donald Trump crushed his Republican rivals in Indiana's primary on Tuesday, bringing him to the brink of outright victory in the presidential nomination race and dashing the hopes of a movement bent on stopping him.

The billionaire trounced Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, his two remaining competitors in a roller-coaster nomination race that appears increasingly likely to see Trump go head-to-head with presumptive Democratic standard-bearer Hillary Clinton in the general election.

The Democratic race was initially too close to call, with Bernie Sanders taking a razor-thin lead over former secretary of state Clinton based on 25 percent of precincts reporting.

Both Trump and Clinton were betting on Indiana to put them one step closer to locking up the White House nominations.

The latest contest in the 2016 White House race was also seen as a day of reckoning for the "stop Trump" movement.

Cruz had been hoping to use the midwestern state as a firewall, blocking Trump from receiving the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination ahead of the Republican convention in Cleveland in July.

But the bombastic real estate mogul - who has thus far defied all political logic to lead the Republican race - swept the arch-conservative senator aside.

Partial results showed the billionaire real estate mogul securing over 53 percent of the vote, almost 20 points ahead of Cruz. Kasich languished at eight percent.

"Lyin' Ted Cruz consistently said that he will, and must, win Indiana. If he doesn't he should drop out of the race-stop wasting time & money," Trump taunted in a tweet.

Should Trump win all 57 delegates at stake in Indiana, he will need just 40 percent of remaining Republican delegates to reach the magic number of 1,237 needed to avoid a contested party convention.

Clinton, 68, is far enough ahead overall that Sanders' only hope now lies in the unlikely scenario of her failing to win a majority of delegates in the primaries, in which case her nomination could be contested at a Democratic convention in July.

But regardless of the outcome in Indiana, Clinton has already pivoted toward Trump.

"I'm really focused on moving into the general election," she said confidently Tuesday in West Virginia.

"That's where we have to be because we are going to have a tough campaign against a candidate who'll literally say or do anything," she said of Trump. "We're going to take him on at every turn."