Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won Tuesday’s Republican caucuses in Utah, handily defeating front-runner Donald Trump.
The senator had high expectations and pledged a strong showing on the eve of Election Day. Cruz told Fox News he was “exceedingly optimistic” about his chances of emerging victorious.
Cruz won with the support of several prominent Republicans in the state, including Sen. Mike Lee, Gov. Gary Herbert, and Congresswoman Mia Love. Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, also announced he would vote for Cruz, in large part to block Trump, apparently angering the billionaire.
In the days leading up to Tuesday’s primaries, Trump questioned Romney’s Mormon faith and called him a “choke artist.” But Trump fell short in Utah, which has a large Mormon population.
Cruz succeeded in clearing the 50-percentage-point threshold statewide and was therefore on track to win all of the state’s delegates. If no candidate had won a majority of the votes, then the delegates would have been awarded on a proportional basis among the candidates.
Recent polling had shown Cruz hovering just above 50 percent in Utah. Phill Wright, Cruz’s Utah state chairman, told the Washington Examiner he was hopeful and optimistic that Cruz would win a majority of the votes cast.
“We anticipate that he will win the majority of votes, 50 percent or more and he’ll end up taking all 40 of our delegates,” Wright said. “We’re confident.”
Cruz is hoping to catch up to Trump in the delegate count or, failing that, hold him below the 1,237 required to win the nomination on the first ballot. Cruz would then try to beat Trump at the contested convention, winning the nomination on subsequent ballots.
