• by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, March 16, 2016

Marco Rubio has gone the way of those who dared meet Donald Trump head on: Polls plunged and he dropped out. In what Politico aptly called a “kill shot,” Donald Trump picked up a trouncing 45.8% in the Sunshine State, to the Florida Senator’s 27%.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich won his home contest handily with 46.8% of the vote, followed by Donald Trump at 35.7%. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was in the low teens and Rubio couldn’t hold on to more than 2.9% of Ohio GOP voters.

The other states voting last night were North Carolina, Missouri and Illinois. In Missouri, Cruz and Trump were in a dead heat into the early hours of the morning, each raking in a tad less than 41%. Rubio was in single digits again, as was the case in every state other than Florida.

Trump won in North Carolina and Illinois, but notably Ted Cruz did relatively well, too. He earned around 30% of the vote in Illinois and about 36% in North Carolina. Cruz’s message of late has been to ask those in his party who want to defeat Trump to get behind his campaign.

Until last night, he was the only other candidate, other than Trump, to win more than one state this primary cycle. He can tout his anti-establishment actions in Congress, such as shutting down the government to endear him to the disaffected anti-Washington base.

Rubio’s defeat and Kasich’s win are a relatively good scenario for Cruz, who now hopes to bolster his ranks with enough anti-Trump support to keep a cap on Trump's delegate count.

GOP contenders need to amass a total of 1,237 delegates in order to secure a nomination. Trump has more than half of what he needs, with 621 pledged party officials. Cruz lags behind with 396.

More than half the states have voted, but delegate-heavy ones, like New York and California, remain ripe for the picking.

Cruz is not the guy the anti-Trump camp wants; he has a reputation for being the most reviled man in the Senate. But ironically, he's what they got if they choose to avoid the expected rupture in the Republican party, should Trump be their nominee.