Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have won the Republican caucuses in Washington DC and Wyoming respectively, suggesting the race for the presidential nomination for the 2016 US election is tightening.
Controversial real estate mogul Donald Trump may be ahead in national polls and in party delegates, but he was easily defeated in the Republican caucus in the US capital.
Senator Rubio, from Florida, earned 37.3 per cent of the vote against 35.5 for Ohio Governor John Kasich. Mr Trump was third, with 13.8 per cent support.
Senator Rubio won 10 of the 19 delegates at stake, while Governor Kasich walked away with the other nine, leaving none for Mr Trump.
Washington is an overwhelmingly Democratic city where just 6 per cent of registered voters are Republicans.
Party faithful stood in long lines throughout the day to cast ballots.
In the western state of Wyoming, Texas Senator Cruz crushed Mr Trump by winning 66.3 per cent of the ballots in a party caucus, far ahead of Senator Rubio, his nearest rival, who earned 19.5 per cent of the vote.
Mr Trump came in third with 7.2 per cent.
Little to stop Trump wreaking havoc
If Donald Trump becomes US president, there are few checks and balances left to keep him in line. As Chris Berg writes for The Drum, we should be worried.
With these results, Senator Cruz wins nine delegates, while Senator Rubio and Mr Trump scored one delegate each, with another delegate uncommitted.
Mr Trump has angered much of the Republican Party establishment, and the millions of dollars being spent on attack ads against him by independent political action committees, or PACs, may finally be showing an effect.
The day's voting was overshadowed by violence at Trump events after the Secret Service rushed the stage to protect the candidate from protestors.
The caucus results came one day after Mr Trump called off a rally in Chicago amid scenes of violence, which the Republican frontrunner blamed on protesters, while his rivals point their fingers at Mr Trump's incendiary rhetoric.
In other contests, Hillary Clinton won in the first ever Democratic Party caucus on the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory deep in the Pacific Ocean.
The former secretary of state won four delegates, while her rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, won two.
And Senator Cruz picked up one delegate in Guam, another US possession in the Pacific, while the island's five other delegates were uncommitted, CNN reported.
The biggest prizes will be on Tuesday (local time), when primaries are held in five delegate-rich states — Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio.
AFP
So How come we haven't heard comment? the Dump pundits remain silent no doubt realing from the shock their boy could lose anywhere. A loss in these places may not mean much except to show Dump is not invincible at a time of important polls
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