If Iowa alone had the power to choose the Republican Party's presidential nominees, then Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee would have been the last two GOP standard bearers.

Strategists from across the political spectrum repeated that historical fact Tuesday, the day after U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz announced his place in the political world by winning the first contest of the 2016 campaign.

The point: The Texan once all but written off has solidified his status as a top contender. But the real work is just now beginning.

"One state has voted. That means 49 more still get to vote," said Seth Leibsohn, a Phoenix-based radio host who worked on Santorum's unsuccessful 2012 campaign and is unaffiliated this time around. "Ted Cruz is not going to win all of them. The key is to survive long enough to win a lot of them."

Leibsohn and other campaign veterans and political experts praised Cruz for steering a well-organized campaign to victory in Iowa, with 28 percent of the vote compared to businessman Donald Trump's 24 percent and Sen. Marco Rubio's 23 percent.

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But while they said Cruz is well-positioned - thanks, in part, to the delegates he is expected to take in the March 1 Texas primary - they also said he faces a series of tests before then, from a likely increase in rivals' attacks to a string of primaries in states less friendly to his evangelical version of conservatism.

The latter list includes the next state to vote, New Hampshire, which is one of the least religious states in the country and has a more proven track record of supporting eventual nominees.

Can he broaden base?

Perhaps most daunting for Cruz, strategists say, is that he is still far behind Trump in national public opinion polls and has not proven that he can expand his appeal beyond his base as well as a more establishment pick such as Rubio. That factor that will become key as other candidates start to drop out of the race, they said.

"He's going to be a force to be reckoned with in this nomination process," said Tom Bevan, executive editor of Real Clear Politics, a political news and polling data aggregator.

"The knock on Cruz," he added, "is: Does he have enough appeal outside of core evangelical conservatives to really increase his ceiling to the point where he becomes the nominee?"

Among the candidates who have fired up the evangelical conservative base but failed to unify the party are Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, in 2012, and Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, in 2008.

Cruz staffers and supporters dismissed comparisons to those two, saying the Texan has done far more to build a national base of support.

"I've got millions of reasons why Cruz is not Mike Huckabee," said Steve Deace, a conservative Iowa political activist who supported Huckabee in 2008 and now works for Cruz. "As in, the millions of dollars that Ted Cruz has on hand."

The $19 million in cash on hand as of the beginning of the year is more than the campaigns of four rivals combined - Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and John Kasich of Ohio, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Deace noted.

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While the Cruz campaign focused heavily on Iowa, it also has made a point to show that it is a national movement. On Tuesday, it announced that it had named chairs in all 95 counties of Tennessee, for example.

Other strategists argued that Cruz may become more attractive to others because his Iowa win dispelled long-standing assumptions that he could not win.

"The unviable candidate narrative is completely shot," said Luke Macias, founder of Macias Strategies, a political consulting firm that has aided Texas state Republicans in Cruz's tea party crowd.

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Still, Macias acknowledged that the increase in viability will correlate to an increase in attacks from rivals who are more liked in political circles.

"The Washington, D.C., cartel will do everything they can to influence all candidates in the race to go after Ted Cruz," Macias said.

The post-Iowa portion of the race kicked off Tuesday in New Hampshire, which is set to vote next Tuesday. Cruz has scheduled 16 public events in the Granite State before then, but he is not expected to win there because it is not typically kind to the most socially conservative candidates.

Santorum, for example, finished fourth in New Hampshire in 2012. Huckabee finished third in 2008.

Lawrence Cheetham, a retired IT manager from Bedford, N.H., who backed Santorum in 2012 and now supports Cruz, said he hoped the Texan would get a big bounce of support from his Iowa win that Santorum could not because the 2012 results were too close to call for days afterward.

Running second

Large post-Iowa bounces are rare, however, said Andy Smith, a University of New Hampshire political scientist, because Granite State residents are so inundated with candidates and ads for months before they vote.

In fact, Smith said, no non-incumbent Republican candidate in the modern era has ever won both Iowa and New Hampshire.

Smith also offered another historical fact to keep in mind: "Nobody in either party in recent history has won the nomination without coming in first or second in New Hampshire."

Cruz currently is polling second - just barely. Real Clear Politics puts him at 11.5 percent, followed by Kasich at 11.3 percent, Bush at 10.5 percent and Rubio at 10.2 percent. Trump is dominating at 33.7 percent.

The pecking order is not as clear in the states that follow New Hampshire - South Carolina, which votes Feb. 20, and Nevada, which holds its caucuses Feb. 23.

The Palmetto State has a relatively high proportion of evangelicals, but not nearly as high as Iowa.

In the state's 2008 contest, Huckabee came in second. In 2012, Santorum came in third - a finish that was more devastating than his New Hampshire performance, according to Leibsohn, the former staffer.

'Up in the air'

"South Carolina is pretty much up in the air," said Kirk Randazzo, a University of South Carolina political scientist.

After South Carolina comes Nevada, another tough state for Cruz; it has far fewer evangelicals and many more Hispanics, who may be inclined to oppose Cruz's tough stance on immigration.

The Cruz campaign's state director, Robert Uithoven, said he plans to target the many liberatarians who reside there.

That could be unlikely, however, said John Tuman, chair of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, because many libertarians there support social deregulation such as legalization of drugs and prostitution, which Cruz clearly does not.

If Cruz can survive Nevada, he will be less than a week away from an advantage that neither Santorum nor Huckabee enjoyed: the power of Texas.

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The nation's largest Republican state will be the biggest prize on Super Tuesday, and Cruz has dominated most Lone Star polls thus far. That hope, combined with his money, could keep him going, strategists said.

"Texas. Yes, Texas is one of the things that he has going for him that we didn't," said Leibsohn, who also cited Cruz's more polished rhetoric and consolidation of support from religious leaders.

"He can do what we did not, I think," Leibsohn said. "He can win."