Ted Cruz denied Donald Trump the big wins he’s used to, siphoning support from Marco Rubio on Saturday to emerge as the Republican best placed to face off against the GOP front-runner.

Cruz delivered two definitive upset victories in Kansas and Maine and held the Manhattan billionaire to narrow wins in Louisiana and Kentucky — shrinking the delegate gap between them and leaving his lower-polling rivals in the dust.


“Donald has a delegate lead right now, though it is fewer than 100 delegates,” Cruz said at a news conference Saturday.

And in a dig at Rubio, he said: “We’ll continue to amass delegates, but what needs to happen is the field needs to continue to narrow.”

Trump, too, called on Rubio to quit, saying he relished a fight with Cruz.

“I want Ted, one on one,” Trump told supporters gathered in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he is itching to deliver a crushing blow to the Rubio campaign that will send the Florida senator of the race.

The GOP establishment had been loath to unite around Cruz, but after seeing the Texas senator notch one victory after another against Trump, some of the party elders are beginning to discuss Cruz as the only viable alternative. Voters appeared to have come to a similar conclusion on Saturday, with many in demographic groups and areas that might typically reward Rubio going instead to Cruz.

Still, Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich insist they will not move aside for Cruz, especially not before March 15, when their home states of Florida and Ohio vote in what could be the biggest night of the 2016 nomination race.

Every contest until then allocates delegates proportionally, so all four GOP candidates have been working to pump up their delegate totals in the meantime — and in every state Saturday night, Cruz came out ahead of both Rubio and Kasich. But on March 15, the contest shifts to a winner-take-all format that could eliminate delegate deficits or send Trump on his way toward clinching the nomination (later in the cycle, some states allocate proportionally again).

On Saturday, Cruz took 48.2 percent of the vote in Kansas, putting Trump in second with 23.3 percent and Rubio in third at 16.7 percent.

And in Maine, Cruz won with 45.9 percent of the vote, beating Trump’s 32.6 percent. Kasich was third at 12 percent and Rubio was locked out of any delegates by falling below 10 percent.

Trump closed the night with small wins in Louisiana and Kentucky, gaining delegates but also watching many go into Cruz’s column.

Of the seven states that have held GOP caucuses so far, Cruz has now won four, and he has notched six primary victories overall. It’s a record that pales compared to Trump’s long string of wins, but the only state Rubio has won outright is Minnesota, and Kasich has yet to win a state.

On Tuesday, Cruz scored his home state of Texas, as well as Alaska and Oklahoma, and in February he won the Iowa caucuses. It’s a geographically diverse list of successes that Cruz supporters will take as more reason for the senator to remain in the race for the long haul, seeing that record as evidence he can compete across the map.

“We saw on Tuesday, the Super Tuesday results that were extraordinary. And today on Super Saturday, we seem to be seeing a continuation of that very same pattern,” Cruz told supporters gathered in Idaho, which will vote Tuesday.

“What we’re seeing is conservatives coming together,” he said.

It’s a common refrain from the senator, who has relentlessly argued that he is the only viable alternative to Trump. But Saturday’s results offered evidence he could be right, as he narrowed the delegate gap between his campaign and Trump’s and showed a better ability to get conservative voters to the polls than his competitors have demonstrated.

All the states that voted Saturday required participants to be registered as Republicans, with some states having earlier deadlines for that registration than others. That hurt Trump, who has shown an ability to turn out cross-over voters with little previous record of participation, and ultimately made the Louisiana primary and Kentucky caucuses far closer than expected.

The Texas senator invested time and resources organizing in and visiting Kansas and Maine, rolling out leadership teams and making last-minute visits (he also held an event in Louisiana on Friday).

Kasich and Rubio notched few delegates, and Rubio was completely shut out in Maine, where he failed to clear the hurdles set for any delegate rewards.

Still, Rubio said this is exactly as his team expected, and he dismissed chatter that he might lose Florida.

“Tonight we will have more delegates than we did last night,” Rubio told supporters and reporters in Puerto Rico. “This map only gets better for us.”

“We’re gonna win Florida, and you’ll find out on March 15 how confident we are,” he said.

Candidates have a handful of opportunities to rack up delegates in places including Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi, as well as in some territories, before March 15. And those contests unfold on more moderate, less friendly territory for Cruz. Also, with the exception of the Northern Mariana Islands, all the March 15 states are primaries, a format with which Cruz has a far less successful record.

“Marco has done well in primaries so far,” Rubio communications director Alex Conant said on Fox News. “We beat Ted Cruz in Virginia. We beat Ted Cruz in South Carolina. We beat Ted Cruz in Georgia, a state that Ted Cruz originally thought he might actually win. So we feel really good about the map moving forward. And after we win the Florida primary, the map, the momentum and the money is going to be on our side.”

On Saturday, a total of 155 delegates were up for grabs, all awarded proportionally. That’s the same amount that was allocated by Texas alone Tuesday, but it is not an insignificant number: It’s also more delegates than were awarded during all of February.

“For anybody other than Trump, it’s important to try to rack up some wins somewhere,” said Steve Munisteri, a former chairman of the Texas GOP who served on the Republican National Committee rules subcommittee that focused on the 2016 calendar. He was backing Rand Paul but is now unaligned. “Especially for Cruz and Rubio, who are trying to say they’re the most viable alternative [to Trump]. Momentum is important, but we’re now in a delegate game where someone’s trying to get to 1,237,” the number needed to clinch the nomination.

“Every delegate Trump gets, gets him closer,” Munisteri noted.

But on Saturday, with two wins under his belt for the day, it appeared to be Cruz who would enter the week with momentum, leaving Trump reeling from a bad night despite his standing as the national poll leader and Rubio scrambling to show ability to win.

At this point, Rubio and Kasich have no clear path to the nomination outside of a brokered convention. Keeping Trump’s delegate totals down this week could prolong the nomination process, though any delegate deficit could also be compensated for on March 15.

