Is Ted Cruz starting to land enough punches to take out Donald Trump?

Statistician Nate Silver of the website FiveThirtyEight tweeted this late in the day on Super Saturday:

If you're reporting this as anything other than a huge night for Cruz and a terrible one for Trump, you're doing it wrong.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 5, 2016

Ted Cruz won Maine by 13 points, and while he lost to Trump in Louisiana and Kentucky, the FiveThirtyEight wonks found that the gap between Trump and Cruz was much more of a squeaker than the TV networks originally thought, especially in Louisiana. Trump beat Cruz by only 3.7 points in Louisiana and 4.3 points in Kentucky.

He'll probably hold on, but the networks wouldn't have called Louisiana for Trump had they known what we know now: https://t.co/rcWWpzOtjj

— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) March 6, 2016

The big Super Saturday news for Ted Cruz, however, was his smashing of Donald Trump in the Kansas caucuses. Cruz won the state by double digits, 48% to Trump’s 23%.

The actual numbers of caucus voters in Kansas are staggering.

Kansas GOP chairman Kelly Arnold released numbers Saturday night showing that over twice as many voters turned out to caucus as in 2012 — 81,000 as opposed to 30,000. Among the candidates, Cruz came in first, Trump second and Rubio third. Between Cruz and Trump, the “Cruznado” racked up about 35,000 votes, Trump about 17,000.

Live shot of the Cruz campaign in Kansas. pic.twitter.com/kRRIelMX6F

— jon gabriel (@exjon) March 5, 2016

I can personally attest to the massive numbers voting in Saturday’s Kansas caucuses. As a Kansas Republican, I helped with voter intake at one of the sites in a Kansas City suburb. I took in my first voter straight up at 10:00, when the polls opened. The stream of people continued uninterrupted until the polls closed at 2:00 — and even then we took in stragglers that were still in line until about 2:20. Some voters told us they had waited outside the polling place for over an hour. Fortunately the weather was good, and the voters displayed typical Midwestern courteousness.

Trump, originally scheduled to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, had dumped out on the event, making a beeline for Kansas to stump in Wichita, a place to which he apparently wasn’t eager to go. “After making this huge U-turn to Kansas, if I lose, I’m going to be so angry at you,” he told supporters.

Wichita Republicans, however, weren’t all overjoyed to see Trump. He was booed as he addressed a caucus Saturday morning.

.@realDonaldTrump is being booed right now as he speaks to this Kansas Caucus! #KSCaucus pic.twitter.com/ehnPldhj0R

— Samantha-Jo Roth (@SamanthaJoRoth) March 5, 2016

However, when Ted Cruz took the same caucus stage, the crowds were ecstatic.

.@tedcruz takes the stage to a huge welcoming. Most people in this crowd seem to be Cruz supporters! #KansasCaucus pic.twitter.com/LhLJHpzNCR

— Samantha-Jo Roth (@SamanthaJoRoth) March 5, 2016

Meanwhile, Ted Cruz attended CPAC, and won its straw poll handily.

Trump’s supporters may be the most raucous, but their percentages aren’t increasing.  As Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight noted:

You keep hearing from people like me that Trump has a floor of about one-third of the vote. For instance, he averaged 35 percent in the Super Tuesday contests. Today, it’s the same story. His average vote percentage in the four states that voted today is 33 percent. The big difference from other days is that Cruz was able to coalesce a lot of the anti-Trump bloc, which led to at least two victories

Will Ted Cruz finally be able to land that knockout blow to Donald Trump’s glass jaw? With his two victories over Trump on Saturday — particularly his pummeling of Trump in Kansas — Cruz has proven that he can go the distance with Trump, and just maybe land that knockout blow.