Donald Trump's steamroll to the GOP nomination is in trouble, with an expected loss in Wisconsin's Tuesday primary to surging rival Sen. Ted Cruz, denying the front-runner a lion's share of the delegates he'll need to cinch the party's nod.
Trump is trailing the Texas lawmaker in
recent polls, including a Marquette University Law School survey last week that put Cruz in first place with 40 percent, crushing Trump by 10 percentage points,
Politico reports.
And if the Cruz surge holds, he'll take the largest share of the state's 42 delegates because of the Badger State's "winner-take-most" primary rules, Politico reports — delegates Trump needs to stay on track toward the required 1,237 delegates for the nomination.
According to Politico, the Cruz campaign has been trouncing Trump behind the scenes as well installing favorable convention delegates, like in Tennessee, where delegates will be able to vote freely after two ballots at the convention, and in North Dakota, where delegates are free to vote how they want from the start — and 18 of the 25 were on Cruz's preferred list.
Wisconsin uses a hybrid system to dole out its 42 delegates, with the winner getting 18 delegates, and the other 24 allocated based on the results in the state's eight congressional districts, with the winner in each district claiming all three of its delegates, Politico notes.
Meanwhile, Cruz is feeling increasingly confident.
"I think we're going to have a good night," he said on the eve of the Tuesday primary.
"We're seeing a turning point playing out over the last several weeks," adding that a win in Wisconsin would "make a powerful statement all across the country" and "have a powerful impact on the states that are coming up."
Still, as of Monday, Cruz was more than 250 delegates behind Trump, according to an Associated Press tally.
And he'd need to have big wins in the remaining states in the Republican primary if he were to have a chance to overtake Trump's formidable lead.
"That would require really a sea change that the tide has turned on Trump and the public has soured on him," Rick Tyler, former communications director for the Cruz campaign, tells Bloomberg News of Cruz's prospects.
"We haven't seen that moment yet and it remains to be seen whether we will see that moment."
Bloomberg contributed to this report.