Sen. Ted Cruz has won more delegates than GOP front-runner Donald Trump since Sen. Marco Rubio ended his presidential bid, helping to validate his argument that he could beat Trump once the race consolidated.

Rubio dropped out of the race after losing Florida on March 15. Since then, Cruz has won 77 delegates, compared with 65 for Trump. This does not count this past weekend's results from North Dakota, where most of Cruz's preferred delegates were elected, because they aren't formally bound to vote for him.

To be sure, it's worth adding a number of caveats. There is a small sample size of states, and nearly all of Cruz's post March 15th delegate haul has come from two states — Utah and Wisconsin — that were already seen as less hospitable to Trump. As the race moves to the Northeast, kicked off by Trump's home state of New York on April 19th, the numbers could quickly change.

That having been said, it's worth remembering that a lot of critics of Cruz were arguing that after southern states voted on March 1, all of Cruz's best states were behind him, and the rest of the primary calendar wasn't as favorable. They also assailed his strategy of trying to push Rubio out of the race.

But now it's become pretty clear how the thinned out field has benefited Cruz. Trump is no longer able to hide from scrutiny under the camouflage of a crowded field, forcing him to flail around. Cruz was humanized by Trump's attacks on his wife Heidi, and took full advantage of Trump's stumble on abortion. Since Rubio left, Cruz has demonstrated that he's been able to consolidate the anti-Trump vote.

Yes, Trump was vulnerable in Wisconsin and Utah, but it's also easy to see a scenario under which, with Rubio in the race, the anti-Trump vote gets split, meaning no candidate would have gotten past the 50 percent winner-take-all threshold in Utah, and Trump would have had a better shot in Wisconsin. In the last poll of the state taken before Rubio dropped out, Trump was 10 points ahead, as Cruz and Rubio were splitting votes. But after Rubio dropped out, Cruz led nearly every poll up through Tuesday's landslide victory.

Looking ahead, Cruz faces definite headwinds (particularly in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and New Jersey). But should he continue to consolidate the anti-Trump vote, Cruz should be able to win the winner-take-all prizes of South Dakota, Montana, and Nebraska; and he should have a shot in the increasingly key races of Indiana and California.

All of this will be important toward claiming legitimacy heading into the convention. If Cruz can show that the bulk of Trump's delegate lead came when the field was fractured, but that he did better once it consolidated, his case for the nomination going into Cleveland will become much stronger.