“Trump winning evangelicals!”
Evangelical vote is split between Trump, Cruz, Rubio, and Carson.
The plan is to suppress Evangelicals by splitting their votes until the northern, more liberal, less Evangelical states are in play.
Trump won on the populist and the open primary Dem vote.
But he did it at over 30% which is a base hit. Not a grand slam, but he is maintaining his momentum. The race is still his to lose.
The danger for Trump was in being the assumed winner. For some voters who might otherwise have voted for Trump, that made Cruz vs Rubio more interesting. In that contest, even if Cruz pulls ahead by a few votes, he lost. He probably will, because those absentee votes don't reflect the momentum of the past few days. No one predicted Rubio would be so strong. For Rubio to have recovered so quickly and so well from that debate which was criticized is impressive.
It's bad news for Cruz.