Analysis: Cruz won Texas by historically small margin



Continue clicking to see photos from Ted Cruz's celebration in Texas after Super Tuesday. less Texas Sen. Ted Cruz speaks onstage at his Super Tuesday victory party Tuesday night at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford.

Continue clicking to see photos from Ted Cruz's celebration in Texas after Super ... more Texas Sen. Ted Cruz speaks onstage at his Super Tuesday victory party Tuesday night at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford. Image 1 of / 45 Caption Close Analysis: Cruz won Texas by historically small margin 1 / 45 Back to Gallery

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's Lone Star victory Tuesday night may have been the narrowest home state victory in modern GOP election history, according to an analysis from the University of Minnesota.

Cruz won Texas with 43.8 percent of the vote — below the 50 percent threshold that experts said he'd need to claim a resounding victory. Still, it was a victory, and it helped cement Cruz's second place standing the GOP field.

In the UMN's Smart Politics blog, however, political scientist Eric Ostermeier called Cruz's Texas win "decidedly shy of impressive."

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Ostermeier wrote: "A Smart Politics analysis finds that Ted Cruz's 43.8 percent showing in Texas marks the lowest support ever recorded by a Republican presidential candidate in a home state victory out of more than five-dozen campaigns to win their home state since 1912."

Some candidates have failed to win their home states at all, however.

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Regardless of the modest margin of victory, the night went better for Cruz than it could have: pundits had warned that a tie for Texas, or even a single-digit lead, could mean the end for the Cruz campaign, which finished about 17 points over leading rival, Donald Trump.

In his victory speech, Cruz spun the win as an important threshold, telling an audience that he had decidedly emerged as the only viable challenger to Trump from the GOP nomination.