Photo 
 
 Donald J. Trump was the winner in North Carolina, according to The Associated Press, widening his delegate lead with a Mid-Atlantic state that was hit hard by the economic downturn. 
 
 Mr. Trump campaigned heavily in the state in recent weeks, hoping to capture the same success that propelled him to victory in neighboring South Carolina last month. His time there was not without controversy, as one of his supporters punched a protester in the face during a rally last week. 
 
 Although North Carolina received less fanfare than Ohio and Florida, the state was rich with delegates. There were 72, to be divided proportionally, at stake. 

 John Kasich tasted victory for the first time in 2016 with a primary win in Ohio, and it came at precisely the moment he lost his chance to become the Republican presidential nominee without unprecedented chaos. 
 
 Despite the victory celebration at Kasich’s Ohio headquarters, there are not enough contests left – with enough delegates at stake – to lift Kasich to the top of the GOP field ahead of the Republican National Convention in July. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Indeed, Kasich would need to secure more than 100 percent of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination without going to a contested convention. 
 
 Kasich seemed to acknowledge that, foreshadowing a long campaign that yields a convention with more than one candidate still standing. “I may go to the convention before this is over with more delegates than anyone else,” Kasich boasted to CNN after the network called the race. 
 
 The math is daunting. Kasich entered the day with just 63 delegates out of the more than 1,000 already awarded. He’ll claim another 66 from Ohio, and at best would claim a significant share of delegates in Illinois. But with only 1,000 delegates remaining on the calendar after Tuesday, Kasich won’t be able to clear a majority – the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination outright. 
 
 His team now is left to hope that Donald Trump, too, fails to acquire enough delegates to seal the nomination before the convention. 
 
 “It’s increasingly likely that no one will have a majority going into the convention,” said John Sununu, a former New Hampshire senator and Kasich surrogate. “Every delegate, every vote becomes important.” 
 
 While Kasich’s ascension seems unlikely, the bigger victory in Ohio may be for the party’s anti-Trump forces. Ohio denies Trump a crucial pot of delegates that could have put him on a clear trajectory to claim the Republican nomination himself. Instead, he now faces a three-month slog against rival Ted Cruz en route to the convention. 
 
 Kasich has stubbornly refused to discuss his campaign’s convention strategy – though it’s clear he needs one and that he has a team considering it. He’s tapped Jai Chabria, a longtime Ohio hand, to oversee those efforts. 
 
 Perhaps his greatest asset in the ensuing weeks is the tone of his campaign – an intentionally optimistic contrast to the dour and resentful tone often embodied by the campaigns of Trump and Cruz. 
 
 “The degree to which John Kasich in that environment is noticed, is paid attention to and can begin to crystallize the larger choice -- is he able to win states after Ohio based on the clarity of that choice?” wondered Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “That’s the open question.” 
 
 Delegates Remaining: 30 Delegates 1,543 559 165 161 23 7 4 1 1 1 0 0 0 1,237 Delegates Needed for Nomination 
 
 To Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Kasich’s home-state win was a bare minimum achievement for a credible presidential contender. The onus is now on him to prove that he can win elsewhere with the same uplifting and inclusive message that helped him stave off Trump in Ohio. 
 
 “You’ve got to be able to translate the brand outside your backyard,” he said. “The real challenge that he faces is how does he make that brand work for him beyond Ohio?” 
 
 If Trump can’t secure the nomination outright by winning a majority of delegates ahead of the convention, then Kasich is counting on a contested convention in which allegiances and loyalties shift dramatically. It would require a dramatic reversal for convention delegates – who will almost certainly head to the convention overwhelmingly supporting anti-establishment candidates Trump and Cruz – to flip their support to a candidate running on his depth of experience and establishment credentials. 
 
 But Kasich intends to slog along. His next stop is Pennsylvania on Wednesday, and he has three town halls scheduled in Utah on Friday. 
 
 John Brabender, a senior adviser to Rick Santorum’s 2016 presidential bid, said Kasich can play up his Pittsburgh roots if the campaign turns toward the industrial state – and he may be the only option to challenge Trump, who’s excelled among the blue-collar, industrial workers prominent there. 
 
 “Both of them will do well there,” he said. “I do think that in some regards, Kasich is probably the most viable opponent to Trump in Pennsylvania.” 
 
 Brabender said Kasich’s presence could be crucial to denying Trump delegates across the northeast and more moderate states that are still on the calendar, from Maryland and Delaware, to Rhode Island and Connecticut. 
 
 “Kasich, who’s probably seen as more moderate … I think will benefit in states like New York and Pennsylvania,” he said. 

 BEREA, Ohio - Believe it or not, this was the easy part for John Kasich. 
 
 The Ohio governor won his home state's Republican presidential primary Tuesday, claiming all 66 delegates up for grabs. Kasich now has a chance to block real estate mogul Donald Trump, the front-runner who has many party leaders in a panic over the prospect of his nomination. 
 
 But it is a slim chance. It depends on Kasich and the GOP establishment executing a near-flawless strategy in the coming weeks and months. And if this year's race has taught us anything, it's that even the best laid plans can melt under the flame of Trump's unpredictable candidacy. 
 
 If this is, as Trump's foes believe, a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, it's now more likely than ever before that it won't be resolved before the convention begins July 18 in Cleveland. 
 
 "All I can say is thank you from the bottom of my heart," Kasich told his supporters during his victory speech, his first as a presidential contender. "I want you to know something. We are going to go all the way to Cleveland and secure the Republican nomination." 
 
 Here's what is going right for Kasich. 
 
 With the exit of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who on Tuesday lost his home state to Trump, he is now in the final three with Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz - and the only establishment-friendly candidate left standing. He will receive much more media buzz and an opportunity to consolidate support among those uncomfortable with Trump or Cruz. 
 
 A positive sign on that front came after Kasich's speech, when his campaign announced veteran operatives Charlie Black, Tom Ingram, Stu Spencer and Vin Weber had joined the team. 
 
 Here's where things get rough for Kasich. 
 
 It takes 1,237 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination. Even with his Ohio victory, it's now mathematically impossible for Kasich to get there through the remaining primaries. In a memo sent to reporters after networks called the race for Kasich, chief strategist John Weaver predicted that none of the three candidates will reach the magic number before Cleveland. 
 
 Trump, the delegate leader, did not have a bad day. Besides Florida, he also won primaries in Illinois and North Carolina and was in a tight Missouri race with Cruz late Tuesday. 
 
 The Ohio results nonetheless foreshadow trouble for the billionaire. What had been predicted to be a close race ended with a double-digit win for Kasich. 
 
 Trump's nationalist rhetoric on immigration and trade plays well with white working-class voters, as evidenced by Trump's strong showing in eastern and southeastern Ohio. But as the race shifts to other large Midwest states, Trump will encounter similarly diverse electorates. 
 
 Kasich's milder message might be a better fit. 
 
 The governor has acknowledged that his path to the nomination runs through a contested convention. He said this week that he believes he can win enough delegates to arrive in Cleveland with the lead. That seems awfully ambitious, given that he entered Tuesday dead last in that department. At the very least, Kasich needs to win enough to maintain leverage. 
 
 To put perhaps too fine a point on things, he held his election night party in the Cleveland area, at Baldwin Wallace University. Home-field advantage pushed Kasich over the edge in the primary, so why not at the convention four months from now? That is the hard part. 
 
 Winning the primary was hard, too. Harder than it looked from the final spread and certainly harder than Kasich thought it would be when he entered the race last summer. His job-approval rating and popularity in Ohio, always a hotly contested battleground in the general election, are among his key selling points. 
 
 The first signal Kasich might be vulnerable in Ohio came last fall, when one poll showed him trailing Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who dropped out of the race this month. 
 
 So in January, the Kasich-controlled Ohio Republican Party took the unusual step of issuing an early endorsement - for the governor, of course - in the presidential primary. The party's chairman, staunch Kasich ally Matt Borges, became the campaign's de facto Ohio director. 
 
 The Ohio GOP's involvement, along with a heavy investment from New Day for America, a pro-Kasich super PAC, ensured that Kasich had the superior ground game. And though ideally he would have competed in Illinois and Missouri, two other Midwest states that held primaries Tuesday, Kasich committed to an all-Ohio, all-the-time strategy in the closing days. 
 
 Trump, of course, played the wild card. He targeted Ohio aggressively with vicious ads and Twitter rants and with wild rallies where he lit into Kasich with factually flawed attacks. 
 
 Kasich, following his solid second-place finish last month in the New Hampshire primary, had maintained a positive message and avoided any confrontation with Trump. But clashes between Trump supporters and protesters emerged as a flashpoint over the weekend. 
 
 After Trump canceled a Chicago event over concerns about escalating violence, Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the other remaining Republican hopeful, quickly accused Trump of provoking such skirmishes with his angry tone. Kasich had little choice but to follow. 
 
 Kasich seemed uncomfortable Saturday as he called out Trump for "creating a toxic atmosphere." But at subsequent events he had found a way to graft the criticism onto his optimistic stump speech. "I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land," he said repeatedly - and to sustained applause and standing ovations at nearly every stop on his tour. 
 
 In this respect, Kasich, who had cheekily proclaimed himself the Republican Party's "prince of light and hope," turned the race into a referendum on Trump's dark politics. 
 
 "We're all part of a giant mosaic, a snapshot in time," he told supporters Tuesday. "All of us here. It is our job as Americans, our job as people who want to be decent and live good lives, to dig down and understand that purpose and never underestimate our ability to change the world." 
 
 Kasich will look to build momentum Wednesday in Pennsylvania, which holds a late April primary. He also will spend time in Utah, which holds caucuses March 22. He could get a boost there from Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee who is well-established in the state. Romney, a leader in the Stop Trump effort, campaigned for Kasich this week in Ohio. 
 
 Before the results came in Tuesday, Kasich hinted that he will ratchet up his scrutiny on Trump, particularly with regard to Trump's bawdy comments about women. The governor has long craved a two-man race with the businessman. Now, he may finally get one. 
 
 But in his victory speech, Kasich set his sights on Hillary Clinton, the winner of Ohio's Democratic primary. Polls have consistently shown Kasich as her toughest Republican rival here in November. Kasich on Tuesday promised his supporters one more Ohio victory lap this fall. 
 
 That might be his best argument for uniting the fractured GOP. 

 Five states held primaries on Tuesday night. Some people won, others lost. My look at both is below. 
 
 Winners 
 
 * Hillary Clinton: It's a delegate game at this point and Clinton's massive win over Bernie Sanders in Florida alone would have made her a winner from these primaries. But, she also won Ohio — a place where the Sanders folks were sneaky confident in their chances — and Illinois and North Carolina. 
 
 Clinton could net 60+ delegates out of Florida at this rate, increasing her overall delegate lead by 30% — Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) March 15, 2016 
 
 Clinton holds a slight edge over Sanders in Missouri, but the race is still too close to call. But, remember: Winning isn't enough for Sanders. He needs to win big states by a lot if he wants to make up real ground on Clinton's large delegate lead. On Tuesday night, he didn't do that. Again. 
 
 Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and her rival, Bernie Sanders, spoke about the challenges going forward after primary voters took to the polls in five states on March 15. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) 
 
 * Donald Trump: The Republican establishment is desperate to conclude that Trump's loss to Kasich in Ohio makes this a bad night for the real estate mogul because his path to the 1,237 delegates he needs to formally lock up the nomination got more difficult. Or did it? As the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman has noted, Trump's clear statewide margin in Illinois appears to be trickling down to the state's 18 congressional districts. And, remember that the winner of each congressional district gets three delegates while the statewide winner (Trump) gets 12. 
 
 Republican front-runner Donald Trump spoke in Palm Beach, Fla., after primary voters took to the polls in five states: Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina. (Reuters) 
 
 If Trump carries, say, 15 of the state's 18 districts, he would net 57 delegates of the state's 69 delegates -- almost nullifying the 66 he lost in Ohio. Trump also won North Carolina and overwhelmingly in Florida. It's possible that the math between Ohio and Illinois will ultimately work against Trump when all the votes are counted. But he remains the only candidate in the GOP race with an even semi-credible path to securing the nomination before the GOP convention. That was true before Tuesday night and is just as true after Tuesday night. And Trump has now won at least 18 of the 32 contests (depending on the Missouri outcome) so far in the Republican race. Pretty good. 
 
 * John Kasich: When you have a "must-win" state and you win that state, you make the winners column. Period. That Kasich will get a boost from beating Trump is remarkable considering that Kasich won 86 of Ohio's 88 counties in his 2014 reelection race and is a beloved figure among Republicans in the state. But, still, he won. The Kasich team should enjoy tonight because the delegate math is, well, impossible for him. He would have to win more than 100 percent of the remaining available delegates to get to the 1,237 delegates he needs to be the party's nominee. 
 
 No matter, argued the Kasich campaign in a memo released Tuesday night; "With the electoral map shifting significantly in our favor, Governor Kasich is positioned to accumulate a large share of the almost 1,000 remaining delegates and enter Cleveland in strong position to become the nominee," wrote chief strategist John Weaver. Um, okay. Kasich now seems likely to hang around at the periphery of the Trump-Cruz race for the next few months, hoping to collect delegates and lead a revivifying of the GOP establishment in the event the convention deadlocks and he emerges as a consensus candidate. "We are going to go all the way to Cleveland," Kasich promised Tuesday night. 
 
 Republican presidential candidate John Kasich spoke in Berea, Ohio, after winning Ohio's primary election. (Reuters) 
 
 * Rick Scott: No, the Florida governor didn't endorse any of the Republican candidates in his home state primary. But, there was no doubt that Scott carried an admiration for Trump. Scott, I believe, remains very much in the mix to be Trump's vice presidential pick given how strong Florida came home for The Donald. Of course, Trump has to win the nomination first. 
 
 * Early poll closings: Five states. None closing later than 8 p.m. Eastern Time. God bless you, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri. My sleep cycle thanks you. 
 
 * Washington Post newsroom: Normally on election nights, we get pizza or bad BBQ. Tonight? DISTRICT TACO! Home run! Boom goes the dynamite! 
 
 Losers 
 
 * Marco Rubio: Losing your home state is one thing. Losing it by double digits? When you could see that loss coming from a mile away? (The last poll in Florida that showed anyone other than Trump ahead? It was in mid-July! And Jeb Bush, not Rubio, was the one who was ahead!) Rubio, I suppose, didn't want to bow out before Florida voted since he said it would pick the nominee. 
 
 Marco Rubio (March 8): “I believe with all my heart that the winner of the Florida primary...will be the nominee of the Republican Party.” — Matt Viser (@mviser) March 15, 2016 
 
 But in retrospect that might have been the right move in order to save some face for what remains a promising political career ahead. Rubio's speech announcing that he would leave the race functioned as an indictment of Trumpism and a ground-laying for a future presidential (or gubernatorial) bid. And it was quite good, showcasing the potential that everyone in the GOP believed it might make Rubio its nominee this time around. 
 
 On the bright side, we'll always have this: 
 
 The Fix's Chris Cillizza breaks down why Marco Rubio was never going to be president. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) 
 
 * Bernie Sanders: Sanders will go on from this Tuesday of voting. He will continue to raise money. There will be states to come that Sanders will probably win. His movement will continue on. But, running a serious national campaign designed to influence the eventual nominee is a very different thing from running a serious national campaign to be the nominee. Tonight confirmed that the former is Sanders's near-certain lot in this race. That's not a bad place to be. But, it's not a place that gets you to the winner's circle. 
 
 * Republican establishment: With Rubio's decision to leave the race, the establishment is left with two options to stop Trump: Cruz and Kasich. Cruz is hated by the party establishment -- h-a-t-e-d -- and Kasich's chances of winning are roughly the chances that I run a 4.4 second 40-yard-dash anytime soon. It's not totally impossible but it's very, very, very, very unlikely. Rubio was long the establishment's golden boy. But voters didn't agree. If you doubted that the Republican establishment was toothless in the face of the revolution sparked by Trump, Rubio's demise should convince you. The two most likely GOP nominees for president in 2016 are Trump and Cruz -- a total nightmare scenario for establishment GOPers when this campaign started. 
 
 Donald Trump had a good night on March 15, but polls show Republican party isn't entirely behind the GOP front-runner. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) 
 
 * "Super" Tuesdays: Let's just stop. CNN ran "Super Tuesday 3" signage for days. Can we agree on two things going forward: 1) We never, ever call another Tuesday "super" for the rest of this election, and 2) We spend 20 minutes some time between now and the 2020 primary season figuring out what to call each week in which more than one state votes? This shouldn't be that hard. Deal? Okay. Super! 

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 The Republican field narrowed Tuesday after high-stakes primary races in Florida and Ohio. With the suspension of Sen. Marco Rubio's campaign, the GOP now shifts to a three-man race. WSJ's Shelby Holliday reports. Photo: AP 
 
 Donald Trump scored victories in the Republican presidential primaries Tuesday, winning Florida, the biggest delegate prize of the night, and driving home-state Sen. Marco Rubio out of the race. 
 
 Mr. Trump also won in North Carolina and Illinois. But Ohio Gov. John Kasich prevailed in his home state. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was battling Mr. Trump in a too-close-to-call race in Missouri, slowing the front-runner’s pace toward the GOP nomination. 
 
 In his victory speech to supporters in Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump vowed that his candidacy would broaden the reach of the Republican Party. 
 
 “We have a great opportunity,” he said. “Democrats are coming in. Independents are coming in, and, more important, people who have never voted before.” 
 
 Still, by defeating Mr. Rubio on his home turf, Mr. Trump dashed the hopes of Republican leaders who saw the young, Cuban-American senator as their best messenger to broaden the party’s appeal. 
 
 Mr. Kasich, a two-term governor and former congressman, is left as the only representative of a GOP leadership wary of the combative Mr. Cruz and openly hostile toward Mr. Trump. 
 
 Tuesday’s muddled results will make it harder for Mr. Trump to earn the 1,237 delegates he needs to claim the nomination before the Republican convention in July. 
 
 “What we all thought would never happen—a convention fight—now has a better-than-even chance of occurring,” said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who advised a super PAC backing former candidate Jeb Bush. “We haven’t seen a presidential election like this before, and we’re unlikely to see one like it again.” 
 
 Related Video In a year marked by voter anger and candidate divisiveness, Marco Rubio struggled to stand out in a crowded GOP field and scored few early wins. His lackluster run culminated in a loss to Donald Trump in his home state of Florida. Photo: AP 
 
 Mr. Kasich’s win in Ohio was his first of the GOP race, and it offers him a tenuous lifeline. 
 
 “The campaign goes on,” he told supporters in Cleveland, the site of the GOP convention in July. “We’re going to go all the way … and secure the Republican nomination.” 
 
 Mr. Rubio emerged shortly after polls closed to announce that he was ending his campaign. He said his campaign was ill-timed for a year dominated by anger and resentment. “While we are on the right side, this year we will not be on the winning side,” Mr. Rubio said. “While this may not have been the year for a hopeful and optimistic message about our future, I remain hopeful and optimistic about America.” 
 
 It was a day of reckoning for the GOP leadership, which had targeted the winner-take-all contests in Ohio and Florida as the best chance to slow the New York businessman’s momentum. Anti-Trump groups have plowed more than $35 million into attack ads, with the biggest share, $16 million, airing in Florida, according to Federal Election Commission reports. 
 
 How Donald Trump Happened A look at the demographics behind his supporters VIEW Interactive 
 
 Mr. Trump scored an early win on Tuesday in the Republican caucuses on the Northern Mariana Islands and was expected to earn all nine of the territory’s delegates. More than half of the total delegates to the Republican nominating convention will have been awarded once votes in Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Illinois and North Carolina are tallied on Tuesday. 
 
 Before Tuesday’s votes, Mr. Trump had earned 460 delegates, compared with Mr. Cruz’s 370. Mr. Rubio was in third place with 163 and Mr. Kasich had 63. 
 
 Florida will award Mr. Trump all of its 99 delegates, while Ohio will give Mr. Kasich its 66 delegates. 
 
 Republican front-runner Donald Trump built on his momentum Tuesday night by winning Florida, among other primaries. During his victory speech, he said it was now time for Republicans to unite behind the "millions" who are coming out to vote. Photo: Getty 
 
 Mr. Cruz aimed to upset Mr. Trump in Missouri, which has 52 delegates, and was positioned to pick up a share of the 72 delegates in North Carolina and 69 delegates in Illinois. He also campaigned in Ohio and Florida in recent days with the hope of siphoning votes from Mr. Kasich and Mr. Rubio, and landing a coveted one-on-one match-up against the New York businessman in the remaining primaries. Yet Tuesday’s results likely mean the best Mr. Trump’s rivals can hope for is a contested convention. 
 
 In a speech to supporters in his hometown of Houston, Mr. Cruz said Rubio supporters should join his campaign now that their candidate had dropped out. “Starting tomorrow morning there is a clear choice,” he said. “We welcome you with open and welcoming arms.” 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Trump, with a Tuesday call to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), is sending signals that he is ready to step into the role of the presumptive nominee. 
 
 “We had a good conversation,” Mr. McConnell said. The senator said he raised the issue of physical violence at Mr. Trump’s rallies and said he told Mr. Trump: “It might be a good idea to condemn that … no matter what the source.” 
 
 Mr. Trump’s continued rise comes despite harsh condemnations from the last two GOP nominees, former Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain. The GOP establishment has appeared powerless in the face of the pro-Trump populist uprising. And a convention nomination fight could provoke a backlash from his supporters and deepen divisions within the Republican Party. 
 
 “That could be very self-destructive for Republicans,” said Bill Nojay, a New York lawmaker and leading Trump supporter in his own state. “Do we want to waste time fighting among ourselves, or unify behind Mr. Trump and focus on what’s important, which is beating Hillary Clinton?’’ 
 
 In a sign that some Republicans are resigned to Mr. Trump being the nominee, a new super PAC was launched Tuesday to try to protect GOP majorities in Congress at a time when Mr. Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric is tainting the party’s image, according to the group’s founders. 
 
 As voters went to the polls Tuesday, the Conservative Bridge super PAC began sending fundraising emails to millions of Republicans around the country. Unlike other groups formed in response to Mr. Trump’s rise, Conservative Bridge is not trying to intervene in the presidential race. Instead, the group is acting preemptively to try to boost vulnerable Republicans in down-ballot races with an untested candidate like Mr. Trump at the top of the ticket. 
 
 “We are operating on the assumption that Donald Trump will be the presidential nominee,” said Arizona-based political consultant Bert Coleman, who is among four Republicans at the new group’s helm. 
 
 “We think the presidential campaign as a whole, in particular Trump’s harsh rhetoric, has damaged the Republican brand, and the name of the game is now turning out Republican voters in November.” 
 
 Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Kasich said that he plans to offer more detailed critiques of Mr. Trump’s policies and conduct in the campaign. 
 
 Mr. Kasich told reporters after voting Tuesday morning in his hometown of Westerville that he would be “forced going forward to talk about the way this campaign has been run by some others, by one other in particular.” 
 
 Voters Cast Their Ballots in Tuesday’s Primaries Make-or-break races clarify front-runners for Republican, Democratic nominations fullscreen Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a news conference Tuesday night at the Mar-A-Lago Club’s Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom in Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. Trump won the Florida Republican primary with 46% of the vote. Win McNamee/Getty Images … Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets supporters during her primary-night gathering in West Palm Beach, Fla. She won the Florida, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina primaries. JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES … Ohio Gov. and presidential candidate John Kasich gestures at his election rally in Berea, Ohio, on Tuesday. Mr. Kasich won his state’s Republican primary, the first state he has won during primary season. Matt Rourke/Associated Press … Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas, speaks during an election night watch party Tuesday in Houston. The primaries solidified his position as the most formidable competitor to front-runner Donald Trump, but the results kept him from his goal of winnowing the field to a two-man race. DAVID J. PHILLIP/ASSOCIATED PRESS … Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont addresses a crowd during a campaign rally Tuesday at the Phoenix Convention Center. Rival Hillary Clinton is on track to become the Democratic presidential nominee, with a delegate lead large enough to withstand whatever challenge Mr. Sanders mounts before the voting wraps up in June. RALPH FRESO/GETTY IMAGES … Florida Sen. Marco Rubio speaks during a primary-night rally at Florida International University in Miami. Mr. Rubio ended his campaign for the Republican nomination for president after losing his home state to Mr. Trump. Paul Sancya/Associated Press … Supporters react after a primary-night event for Mr. Rubio, who received just 27% of the vote in the Florida Republican primary. ANGEL VALENTIN/GETTY IMAGES … Mrs. Clinton’s supporters cheer at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency … Voters walk to a polling precinct in Boca Raton, Fla. Joe Skipper/Reuters … Volunteers assist voters at a fire station in Cary, N.C. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump won their respective primaries in the state. Gerry Broome/Associated Press … Mr. Sanders’s supporters listen to the Democratic presidential candidate speak in Phoenix. Nancy Wiechec/Reuters … Bob Bolus, a supporter of Mr. Trump, gives the thumbs-up to drivers as they pass by in Middleburg Heights, Ohio. Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters … of SHOW CAPTION HIDE CAPTION fullscreen of 
 
 “But today is not the day to do that,” added Mr. Kasich, who has avoided negative attacks. 
 
 Mr. Kasich is scheduled to campaign on Wednesday in Pennsylvania, though a Rubio supporter is challenging his spot on the April 26 ballot in court. He is also planning to stump in Utah on Friday ahead of its March 22 caucuses. 
 
 The face-off between Mr. Kasich and Mr. Trump in Ohio was a particularly pointed test of whether the 2016 GOP electorate could be persuaded to support an experienced, accomplished politician in spite of widespread disgust with party-establishment leaders. 
 
 Mr. Kasich’s victory came in spite of the fact that many constituents were attracted to Mr. Trump’s anti-establishment siren call. 
 
 “I’m sick of the establishment, both Democrats and Republicans, they’re screwing the U.S. citizens, shipping our work overseas,” said Trump voter Rex Bailey, 64 years old, a Mansfield, Ohio, resident who said he was laid off from his job as a telephone company engineer in January. 
 
 “Kasich is OK, but he’s still part of the establishment.” 
 
 —Reid J. Epstein and Patrick O’Connor contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Reid J. Epstein at Reid.Epstein@wsj.com and Beth Reinhard at beth.reinhard@wsj.com
– In a result not many people saw coming when there were 16 GOP candidates crowding the field, John Kasich is among the last three standing after a double-digit win over Donald Trump in Ohio. But is his first win too little, too late for the governor, who called himself "the little engine that could" after the victory? A roundup of reactions: It's now mathematically impossible for Kasich to clinch the nomination before the Republican National Convention, reports Politico, which notes that he would have to secure more than 100% of the remaining delegates for this to happen. But if he wins more states after Ohio, a contested convention becomes more likely, as does the possibility that Kasich could prevail as a consensus candidate. "Popular Sitting Republican Governor Wins Home State. This should change the tide," quips Nicholas Confessore at the New York Times. Kasich has a chance, but it will depend on him keeping momentum going and the GOP establishment executing "a near-flawless strategy in the coming weeks and months," according to Cleveland.com. Two things in his favor: his positive attitude and the fact that the GOP convention will be held on his home turf. Kasich's campaign claims that he will enter the convention in the best position to become the nominee, though in reality he "now seems likely to hang around at the periphery of the Trump-Cruz race for the next few months, hoping to collect delegates and lead a revivifying of the GOP establishment in the event the convention deadlocks and he emerges as a consensus candidate," predicts Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post. The nomination is still very much a long shot for the governor, but he has managed to slow down Trump's rise and give the GOP establishment a boost, according to the Wall Street Journal, which calls the Ohio vote a test of whether GOP voters could be "persuaded to support an experienced, accomplished politician despite widespread disgust with party-establishment leaders." Is Kasich really the moderate he appears to be? FiveThirtyEight analyzes his record and finds that he is indeed more moderate than the average Republican in today's Congress, though he would have been more conservative than average in 1980 and is still very conservative on issues such as abortion.