US election 2016: Trump under the pump as Cruz wins in Wisconsin

The Republican Party now has a real chance to do what it needs more than anything: stop Mr Trump.

The resounding defeat of Donald Trump by senator Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin Republican primary was the best day for Western ­civilisation since the beginning of the primary season.

It gives the Republican Party a real chance to do what it needs to do more than anything: stop Mr Trump.

It is now very difficult — but not impossible — for Mr Trump to win the 1237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nom­ination before the party’s convention in Cleveland in mid-July. Senator Cruz beat Mr Trump by 48 per cent to 35 per cent, with John Kasich a distant third on 14 per cent and not winning any delegates.

The other big dynamic to emerge from Wisconsin was that the chaos moved from the Republican nominating process across to the Democratic side.

Insurgent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, won his sixth straight primary, beating former secretary of state Hillary Clinton 56 per cent to 43 per cent. Although Mrs Clinton remains far ahead in the ­delegate count, this is a humiliating series of losses for the Democratic frontrunner and demon­strates her weakness.

Senator Cruz won all but a handful of Wisconsin’s 43 available delegates. Mr Trump still leads him in the delegate count by a wide margin — 740 to 514 — with 143 for Mr Kasich and a ­couple of hundred among Republicans who have dropped out of the race.

The Wall Street Journal estim­ated that if Mr Trump lost ­badly in Wisconsin he would need to win 70 per cent of the remaining pledged delegates to get to 1237 before Cleveland. If no one wins a majority in advance, the Republicans will have a brokered convention, with the ­result unpredict­able, although Senator Cruz is the obvious alternative to Mr Trump.

Senior Republicans in ­Washington say that if Mr Trump does not get to 1237 in his own right he will almost certainly not get the nomination. Pledged delegates are only bound to vote for Mr Trump on the first ballot.

If he doesn’t win on the first ballot, they are free to desert him, and Mr Trump’s ­erratic extremism means such a desertion is overwhelmingly likely.

His defeat in Wisconsin followed his worst week in the campaign. He proposed that women who had abortions should face criminal punishment, a position he almost immediately reversed. He attacked Senator Cruz’s wife and proposed that South Korea and Japan should acquire their own nuclear weapons to reduce dependence on the US.

Barack Obama said he was constantly getting questions from foreign leaders about “some of the wackier proposals being made by Republicans”. The President broadened this attack to include Senator Cruz, who is benefiting overwhelmingly from the anyone-but-Trump sentiment.

Wisconsin should have been a good state for Mr Trump. It is 88 per cent white, and 55 per cent of those who voted in the Republican primary had no college education. This is Mr Trump’s core support base. But in Wisconsin he lost all the demographic groups he normally wins. After the ballot, Mr Trump doubled down on his old strategy, saying he would force Mexico to pay $US10 billion to build a wall between the nations by banning currency transfers and imposing tariffs on Mexican imports.

The big question for Senator Cruz now, as it is for Senator ­Sanders, is whether he can win, or at least come very close, in New York. Mr Trump will feel he’s on more familiar ground in New York, a state not naturally likely to favour such an overtly religious evangelical as Senator Cruz.