Cruz plans next move after trouncing Trump in Wisconsin

The Marquette Law School poll, released last Wednesday, shook up perceptions of the Republican presidential race here in Wisconsin. After weeks with no good data, Marquette found Ted Cruz with a ten-point lead over Donald Trump — a finding that was replicated by a Fox Business poll shortly after.

Then, as voting neared, two other polls showed the race closer, with Cruz up by just five or six points. Which would it be? "He might win by 12," one GOP operative not involved with either campaign told me, "and he might win by three."

He did better than that. On the strength of massive support in the talk-radio-fueled suburbs of Milwaukee, Cruz ran away with the Wisconsin primary, beating Trump by 13 points.

For days Cruz and his top surrogates, including Gov. Scott Walker, had been expressing the hope that Wisconsin would change the direction of the Republican race — specifically, that it would mark the beginning of the end for Trump. That seemed to come true Tuesday night. "Tonight is a turning point," Cruz told cheering supporters not long after the race was called. "It is a rallying cry. It is a call from the hardworking men and women of Wisconsin to the people of America — we have a choice, a real choice."

It was a blowout for Cruz — and Trump's worst defeat so far in the campaign. And while Wisconsin's 42 total delegates won't change the fundamentals of the race, the delegate news was good for Cruz, too. "A few weeks ago, we'd projected Trump to win 25 delegates in Wisconsin," wrote FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver. "It looks like he'll only get 3 to 6 instead." Cruz will get all the rest, leaving him with a gain of at least 36 delegates.