WASHINGTON: Real estate tycoon Donald Trump and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, presidential front-runners for Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, are poised to win the five-state primaries on Tuesday, if the latest opinion polls are to be believed.

This would give Clinton and Trump – both New Yorkers – a clear edge over their primary rivals and move them several steps closer to earning the party's nomination for the November general elections, which would decide President Barack Obama's successor to the White House.

However, even a clear cut win in all of these five states – Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island – is unlikely to make either Clinton and Trump a presumptive nominee, which normally had been the case by now in previous presidential elections.

Trump, who has won 845 delegates so far, is still several hundred delegates short of the required 1,237 delegates. He is followed by Senator Ted Cruz from Texas with 559 delegates and GovernorJ ohn Kasich with just 148 delegates.

The last two have no mathematical path to reach the 1,237 delegate count before the Republican Convention in Cleveland in July.

On the other hand, Clinton has won 1,428 delegates in the primary elections so far and is closely followed by Senator Bernie Sanders with 1,153 delegates.

Clinton has a distinct edge over Sanders in terms of super delegates – who are party officials – and an overwhelming majority of them have pledged their support to her.

As many as 384 delegates are at fray in the Democratic Party, while in the Republican Party, 172 delegates are up for grabs on Tuesday.

Addressing his supporters in Rhode Island, Trump lashed out at his two opponents Cruz and Kasich for forging a strategic alliance to defeat him.

"If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude," he said.

Cruz and Kasich appeared to have already conceded defeat in the five states, but said they hope to slow down Trump's momentum. While Cruz would focus in Indiana, Kasich would devote his entire resources in New Mexico and Oregon.

Trump continued with his "liar Ted" attack against Cruz and launched a fresh attack on Kasich for staying in the race despite having just one state.

"Here's a guy that just says, 'I'm going to stay.' Like if you have a child who's a spoiled brat, where they go, 'I don't care daddy! Get out of the room, daddy. I don't care.' This is like a spoiled guy," he said during another rally in Pennsylvania.

The New Yorker exuded confidence that despite this Cruz-Kasich alliance he would be able to get the 1,237 delegates and bag the nomination before the convention and thus an open or contested convention would be avoided.

Cruz, meanwhile, challenged Trump for a debate.

"Donald Trump continues to cower in Trump Tower, afraid to defend his positions. The reason he's been afraid to do so is he has no answer when he's asked how to bring jobs back to America," he said in a statement.

"He has no answer when he's asked how to keep America safe from radical Islamic terrorism. This is a serious time. The American people want and deserve a serious leader focused on jobs, freedom, and security," Cruz said.

At a town hall in Rockville, Maryland, Kasich said he is running a positive campaign and hoped that at the convention in Cleveland the delegates would elect him as the nominee as only he can defeat Clinton in the general elections.

In a MSNBC town hall, Clinton asserted that she is winning the nomination.

"I am winning because [of] what I stand for and what I've done and what my ideas are. I think we have much more in common, and I want to unify the party," she said.

"There are so many areas where I'm more specific, where I have a track record, where I explain what I will do and I think that's why I have 2.7 million more votes than he does," Clinton said.

Sanders said it is incumbent upon Clinton to reach out not only to his supporters, but to all of the American people with an agenda that they believe will represent the interests of working families, lower income families, the middle class, those who are concerned about the environment, and not just big money interests.

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