Story highlights Ted Cruz won the Republican primary in Wisconsin on Tuesday night

Buck Sexton: Even if he can't win nomination outright, Cruz does benefit from beefing up his delegate stockpile

Buck Sexton is a political commentator for CNN and host of "The Buck Sexton Show" on TheBlaze. He was previously a CIA counterterrorism analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) Ted Cruz won in Wisconsin -- by even more than most recent polls indicated -- in an absolutely essential victory for his campaign. With nearly 50% of the vote going for Cruz, it wasn't just a win. It was a thumping and marks the single most important night of the senator's campaign since Iowa.

In every respect, the Wisconsin result breathes renewed life into the Cruz camp. It means that Sen. Cruz has narrowed Donald Trump's path to victory, pushing further from his grasp that all-important delegate number of 1,237.

It proves that Ted Cruz can play and win in a critical battleground state, and it bolsters the Cruz campaign narrative that, in a less fractured field with a head-to-head fight (John Kasich notwithstanding), Cruz is the choice of a majority of the GOP electorate. Cruz's big night in Wisconsin helps solidify all these positions, and his campaign's odds of success are quickly turning from long shot to coin toss.

Of course, there's still a lot of race to run. With a majority of Wisconsin's 42 delegates now in his pocket, Cruz has cut down Trump's lead, but he still trails by a wide margin. Realistically, holding Trump below the 1,237 threshold is probably the best outcome for the senator.

Trump can still win outright; Cruz almost certainly can't.

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