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Sanders Wins Idaho and Utah While Clinton and Trump Take Arizona

Tuesday's primaries and caucuses were a mixed bag.
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Tuesday's primaries and caucuses were a mixed bag as Sen. Bernie Sanders took two states — Idaho and Utah — to Hillary Clinton's lone win in Arizona, and Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz split the Republican races in Arizona and Utah respectively, NBC News projects.

The western state primaries represented another step in efforts to amass support in the race to the nomination, with both Trump and Clinton hoping that they may tally an outright majority of their party's respective delegates before the summer conventions get contentious.

But Cruz and Sanders both got some good news that can help stall the momentum each of their rivals have received with recent wins.

Sanders held a rally shortly after his Arizona loss, touting high turnout.

"When we began this campaign we talked about a need for millions of people to become involved in the political process," Sanders told supporters at a San Diego rally late Tuesday night. "Tonight in Utah, tonight in Idaho, and tonight in Arizona there are record-breaking turnouts."

He did not speak after his Utah win, which was announced at around 1:30 a.m. ET Wednesday. Idaho was not called until just before 2:30 a.m. ET.

Sanders later put out a written statement, saying: “I am enormously grateful to the people of Utah and Idaho for the tremendous voter turnouts that gave us victories with extremely large margins. The impressive numbers of young people and working-class people who participated in the process are exactly what the political revolution is all about. These decisive victories in Idaho and Utah give me confidence that we will continue to win major victories in the coming contests.”

Clinton spoke confidently after her win in Arizona, but made no comment after the two late-night losses.

“I’m also very proud to have won Arizona tonight," Clinton told supporters at a rally in Seattle, Washington. "It’s exciting to see that result come in because, you know, Arizona, like Washington, like a lot of the states that are going to be expressing their views and counting their votes in the weeks ahead understand that this is not just a contest between different candidates.

"This is a contest between fundamentally different views of our country, our values and our future," she said.

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Democrats will focus next on Saturday's contests in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, although Wisconsin's relatively delegate-rich primary in early April is the next big prize for the remaining candidates on both sides of the aisle. Contests in the northeast — including in Pennsylvania and New York - also loom next month.

Republicans hoping to deprive Trump of a delegate majority plan to push hard for strong showings for Cruz and John Kasich in states that might be favorable to each candidate, but it's far from clear that Trump opponents will be able to slow his steady progress to the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nod.

In a press conference Monday, Trump expressed confidence that he'd reach an outright majority from the remaining primary contests.

"We're going to maybe — easily — make that number," he said.

As of 3:10 a.m. ET, NBC News' delegate count put Clinton at 1637 and Sanders at 928. Trump had 744, with at Cruz 468, Marco Rubio at 172 and Kasich at 143.