Ted Cruz's path to the presidency could be short lived — with statistics revealing his victory in Iowa this week is very similar to the 2008 and 2012 wins of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, whose presidential campaigns eventually went belly up.
The Washington Post reports the Texas senator's big hurrah over billionaire developer Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida relied heavily on strong conservatives and evangelical Christians, not first-time caucus-goers.
That mirrors Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, and Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, whose voters consisted of 76 and 83 percent evangelical Christians, respectively, according to number-crunching by The Post.
The newspaper says more than three-quarters of Cruz's supporters identified as themselves as evangelical Christians.
And nearly two-thirds said they are "very conservative" in an entrance poll — a finding very similar to Santorum, who took two-thirds of his vote from the same group identification.
Cruz's Iowa victory is "a major step to coalescing support among evangelical Christians and very conservative Republicans, who make up hefty portions of the GOP electorate across the country," write Post reporters Scott Clement, Kevin Uhrmacher and Dan Keating.
"Yet appealing to these groups sometimes comes with the risk of alienating middle-of-the-road conservatives and moderates who united to nominate Romney and McCain.
"Both Huckabee's and Santorum's support grew increasingly isolated among the groups that were key to their victories in Iowa — a core reason the first caucus state has not chosen the party's eventual nominee in the past two cycles."
But Trump and Rubio also received "a greater share" of their support from evangelical Christians than either former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012 or Sen. John McCain of Arizona in 2008, according to The Post.
But interestingly, while both Romney and McCain lost Iowa, they eventually won GOP presidential nominations.