Ted Cruz says he won more votes in Wisconsin than Donald Trump did in New York

Ted Cruz got whomped by Donald Trump in the New York primary. But in remarks in Borden, Ind., Cruz tried to take some solace by looking at the numbers a different way.

"I earned more votes in the state of Wisconsin than Donald Trump did in New York," Cruz said.

Is that right? We took a closer look.

Here’s the final results of the April 5, 2016, Wisconsin Republican primary, according to the Associated Press:

Candidate

Wisc. votes

Percentage

Delegates

Ted Cruz

531,129

48.2 percent

36

Donald Trump

386,370

35.1 percent

6

John Kasich

155,200

14.1 percent

0

Marco Rubio

10,569

1 percent

0

Ben Carson

5,608

Featured Fact-check

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

stated on April 1, 2024 in an interview on CNN

“President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history, that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech ... to censor his opponent."

0.5 percent

0

Jeb Bush

3,153

0.3 percent

0

And here are the final results of the April 19 New York Republican primary:

So Cruz did win more raw votes in Wisconsin (531,129) than Trump did in New York (524,932). It’s a modest edge -- Cruz won about 1.1 percent more votes in Wisconsin than Trump did in New York -- but an edge nonetheless.

The discrepancy owes much to two factors: Wisconsin’s turnout rate, which was two and a half times higher than New York’s, and the Republicans’ greater strength in purplish Wisconsin than in solidly blue New York.

In Wisconsin, about 24 percent of the voting-age population cast a Republican primary ballot. In New York, it was just 5.6 percent.

That helps explain why Cruz eked out more raw votes than Trump even though Trump won the much bigger state and almost three times as many delegates.

Our ruling

Cruz said, "I earned more votes in the state of Wisconsin than Donald Trump did in New York." This is certainly a glass-half-full way of looking at the results, but factually, Cruz is on target.

We rate his statement True.