Bernie Sanders was hopeful he could pick up wins in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. While few public polls are available, all three contests are being conducted as caucuses, a format that favors the Vermont U.S. senator.

As he struggles to remain competitive, Western states have become must-wins for Sanders, who lost by large margins in earlier contests in the South.

Sanders and Clinton, the former secretary of state, are competing to represent the Democratic Party in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

No states are holding Republican nominating contests on Saturday, a race in which Donald Trump holds a lead over the remaining rivals U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich.

On Saturday, the New York Times published a lengthy foreign policy-focused interview with Trump. The New York billionaire told the newspaper he might stop oil purchases from Saudi Arabia unless they provide troops to fight the Islamic State.

Trump also told the Times he was willing to rethink traditional U.S. alliances should he become president.

Clinton holds a sizable lead in the delegates race against Sanders, with 1,223 compared to 920. Despite needing to win about two-thirds of the remaining delegates, Sanders has vowed to stay in the race until the Democratic nominating convention in Philadelphia in July.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Clinton with 47 percent of the Democratic vote and Sanders with 46 percent. The poll, which was conducted last week, surveyed 1,249 likely voters and had a credibility interval of 3.2 percentage points.

Washington, with 118 delegates, has the most up for grabs Saturday. Clinton and Sanders also face off in Alaska, where 20 delegates are at stake, and in Hawaii, which has 34 delegates.

Sanders has been campaigning aggressively in Washington, where the demographics and format favor him. He has done better in heavily white states and those that hold caucuses.

Clinton has continued to campaign despite her delegate lead.

“We are on the path to the nomination and I want Washington to be part of how we get there,” Clinton told a crowd in Everett, Washington, on Tuesday. “… It’s important to show up at this caucus on Saturday.”

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Christie said the billionaire front-runner has the best chance of beating Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election – although Clinton has yet to secure her party’s nomination.

The endorsement gives Trump a further lift before next week’s Super Tuesday nominating contests. It comes just a day after he took a battering from his two main rivals at a televised Republican debate.

Trump’s unorthodox candidacy has stirred controversy and shaken the Republican Party at its roots, but an increasing number of senior Republicans are becoming resigned to the idea he will be their candidate in November.

Trump is “rewriting the playbook,” said Christie, 53, who until two weeks ago was himself a rival for the Republican nomination. Christie dropped out after failing to muster much support for his candidacy.

Trump, 69, who has never held public office, has campaigned as a political outsider. He is riding a wave of voter anger at the slow economic recovery, illegal immigration and what he says is America’s diminishing role in the world.

“The best person to beat Hillary Clinton in November on that stage last night is undoubtedly Donald Trump,” Christie told a news conference on Friday, a day after the last Republican candidates’ debate before Super Tuesday.

The debate marked a new, more aggressive approach for U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, 44, who has emerged as the Republican establishment’s challenger to Trump. The other main challenger at the debate was U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

Trump has unsettled mainstream Republicans by winning three straight nominating contests – in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Polls show he is likely to win big in key primaries on Tuesday.

“Since I started this whole thing I’ve been practically Number 1,” Trump said on Friday at a rally in Texas.

The 11 Republican nominating contests on Tuesday have a total of almost 600 delegates at stake, and could set Trump up to clinch the presidential nomination.

Reuters/Ipsos polling data on Friday showed Trump ahead nationally in the Republican race with support at 44.2 percent, followed by Cruz at 20.7 percent and Rubio in third place at 14 percent.

On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Clinton is battling U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Clinton and Sanders have been in a dead head over the past week, the Reuters/Ipsos data shows.

Trump has vowed to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to halt illegal immigration, called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and promised to take a tough stance on trade against China.

He was combative at a rally on Friday. He mocked Rubio, referred to violent Islamist militants as “these animals” and promised to defend Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms.

“We’re going to build up our military, we’re going to knock out ISIS. We’re going to knock out ISIS fast,” he said, referring to the Islamic State militant group.

Wielding a water bottle as a prop, Trump made fun of Rubio for an awkward incident in which the senator grabbed for a drink of water off camera during an important televised speech in 2013.

Rubio and Cruz ganged up on Trump at Thursday’s debate in Houston in a last-ditch bid to keep him from winning in states on Super Tuesday.

Rubio on Friday again took aim at Trump.

“He’s a con man who’s taking advantage of people’s fears and anxieties about the future, portraying himself as some sort of strong guy,” Rubio told reporters in Oklahoma. “He’s not a strong guy. He’s never faced real adversity before.”

PredictWise, a research project that analyzes opinion polls and betting markets, said Trump would comfortably win among Republicans in all but one of the 11 Super Tuesday states that it measured. Cruz, 45, is likely to win in his home state of Texas, PredictWise said.

Rubio’s home state of Florida is not part of the Super Tuesday contests.

PredictIt, based out of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, on Friday gave Trump a 73 percent chance of winning the nomination compared with a peak 75 percent chance two days earlier.

Trump’s swipes at rival candidates and heated exchanges with journalists and others have for months bolstered his standing in nominating contests and opinion polls.

In a post on Twitter, Trump took aim at Rubio, a first-term senator, for his debate performance.

“Lightweight Marco Rubio was working hard last night. The problem is, he is a choker, and once a choker, always a chocker (sic)! Mr. Meltdown.”

Republican strategist Doug Heye said Christie may have opened the door for more mainstream Republican endorsements of a man whose chances of winning the White House were seen as next to nil a year ago.

“If you’re the Trump campaign this is obviously very good news and it gives permission for others to endorse. But it also makes it hard (for Trump) to make the outsider argument,” he said.

Glenn Hubbard, who had been an adviser to the campaign of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the George H.W. Bush administration, said he planned to keep up steady criticism of Trump on economic issues.

“I think it is time for serious people to stand up and be counted. The next few weeks come very quickly,” said Hubbard, who published a column in the Boston Globe on Friday criticizing Trump.

Hubbard, now dean of the business school at Columbia University, told Reuters he worried Trump’s comments already hurt the country’s image abroad and would hobble his ability to govern if elected.

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Trump struck back. No stranger to controversy, the longtime party front-runner in national opinion polls dismissed the leader of the world’s Roman Catholics as “disgraceful” for questioning his faith. He said he was a proud Christian.

Francis told reporters during a free-wheeling conversation on his flight home from a visit to Mexico: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

Trump has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug-runners across the United States’ southern border and has vowed if elected president to build a wall to keep out immigrants who enter illegally.

It was not the first time U.S. allies have voiced concern over comments by Trump.

More than half a million Britons signed a petition to bar him from entering Britain, where he has business interests, in response to his call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States. British lawmakers decided against a ban as a violation of free speech.

Asked if American Catholics should vote for someone with Trump’s views, Francis said: “I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.”

It remained to be seen if the pope’s comments would strengthen Trump in the run-up to the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama. Trump’s swipes at rival candidates and heated exchanges with others have bolstered his standing in nominating contests and opinion polls.

One of Trump’s Republican rivals, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, speaking in Columbia, South Carolina, said he would not question anyone’s relationship with God. But Bush, a Catholic, said: “It only enables bad behavior when someone from outside our country talks about Donald Trump.”

Trump, a real estate developer and former reality TV show host, said: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’ ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.” ISIS is one of the acronyms used for Islamic State.

Trump was in South Carolina, which on Saturday will hold a Republican nominating contest.

At a later town hall meeting televised on CNN, Trump said he had “a lot of respect” for Francis but that the pope had been influenced by hearing only Mexico’s side of the border issue. The pope’s statement also had been exaggerated by the media, he said.

“I think he said something much softer than it was originally reported by the media. I think that he heard one side of the story, which is probably by the Mexican government,” he said. “He didn’t see the tremendous strain that the border is causing us with respect to illegal immigration, with the drugs pouring across the border.”

Thomas Groome, director of the Boston College Center on the Church in the 21st Century, said Francis’ comments were entirely in keeping with his focus on mercy.

“The pope is commissioned to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s his job,” Groome said. “So when he was asked a direct question, he gave Trump the benefit of the doubt, he said we have to be sure he said this, but if he said this, it is not Christian.”

Groome called Trump’s suggestion that Islamic State militants would target the Vatican egregious. “Now it becomes a challenge to ISIS,” he said.

Patrick Hornbeck, chairman of the department of theology at Fordham University in New York, said Francis’ words were not surprising given the poverty he had just seen in Mexico.

“There is very little common ground between Pope Francis and Donald Trump,” Hornbeck said. He predicted the pope’s words on electoral politics would have little effect on any U.S. Catholics who liked Trump as a candidate.

Trump has said he would deport millions of illegal immigrants if he wins the White House. Last week, responding to the pope’s plan to visit the U.S.-Mexican border, he said Pope Francis did not understand the issues.

“The pope is a very political person … I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico,” Trump told the Fox Business Network.

Asked about being called a “political person,” Francis said on Thursday: “Thank God he said I was a politician because Aristotle defined the human person as ‘animal politicus.’ So at least I am a human person.”

Republican Catholics appear to support Trump more than other Republicans do, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll that showed 43 percent of likely Republican Catholic voters supported Trump, compared with 38 percent of Republican voters generally.

The Pew Research Center has said 71 percent of the U.S. population identifies as Christian. That includes the 21 percent of the U.S. population that identifies as Catholic.

The pope was winning the social media battle on Thursday, with overall sentiment negative for Trump and positive for Francis, according to social media analytic firm Zoomph. Author Dan Dicker @Dan_Dicker tweeted: “Let’s see @realDonaldTrump insult his way out of this.”

Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino @DanScavino tweeted: “Amazing comments from the Pope – considering Vatican City is 100 percent surrounded by massive walls.”

Evangelical Christian leader Jerry Falwell Jr., who has endorsed Trump, described him as generous to his employees and family, adding: “I’m convinced he’s a Christian. I believe he has faith in Jesus Christ.”

Trump was not always at odds with the pope. In 2013, the year Francis began his papacy, Trump compared himself to the pope favorably. “The new Pope is a humble man, very much like me, which probably explains why I like him so much!” Trump tweeted on Christmas Day 2013.

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