MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Republican Ted Cruz won the Wisconsin presidential primary on Tuesday, dealing a blow to front-runner Donald Trump’s hopes of amassing the delegates needed for the party’s nomination ahead of the July convention and boosting the chances of a rare contested convention.

Cruz’s win was a breakthrough for Republican Party forces battling to block the controversial New York billionaire, and it raised the prospect of a prolonged nominating fight that could last to the July convention.

Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders also won in Wisconsin, gaining momentum in his fight against front-runner Hillary Clinton and trimming her commanding lead in delegates.

Trump had 737 convention delegates to Cruz’s 481 heading into the vote, leaving him 500 delegates short of the 1,237 needed to become the party’s nominee in the Nov. 8 election. Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, the other remaining Republican contender, hope to stop Trump short of a first-ballot victory and trigger a contested convention.

Cruz, a conservative U.S. senator from Texas, was aided in Wisconsin by the backing of Republican Governor Scott Walker, who had dropped his own presidential bid in September. Party establishment figures, worried that Trump will lead Republicans to a broad defeat in November, have banded together to try to stop him.

The Wisconsin primary followed a difficult week for Trump, who was forced to backtrack after saying women who have abortions should face punishment if the procedure is outlawed, and who voiced support for his campaign manager after he was charged with misdemeanour assault for grabbing a reporter.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday showed Cruz about even with Trump nationally, with Cruz’s recent gains the first time since November that a Trump rivals has threatened his standing at the head of the Republican pack.

The poll, taken April 1 to 5, showed Cruz winning the support of 35 percent of Republicans to Trump’s 39 percent, within the credibility interval for the survey of 568 Republicans. Cruz and Trump were also briefly about even early last week.

As recently as a month ago, when Senator Marco Rubio was also still a candidate, Cruz trailed Trump by about 20 points.

In the Democratic race, the win for Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, is his sixth in the last seven presidential nominating contests, but he still faces a difficult task to overtake Clinton as the presidential nominating race moves to New York on April 19 and to five other Eastern states on April 26.

 (Additional reporting by Eric Beech and Amanda Becker in Washington, Chris Kahn in New York; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Near the end of a Michigan debate that featured sharp clashes over trade and the auto industry bailout, as well as a lengthy discussion of religion, Clinton and Sanders both said they could not wait to face the brash billionaire in the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

“I think Donald Trump’s bigotry, his bullying, his bluster, are not going to wear well on the American people,” Clinton said. “We have to end the divisiveness, we have to unify the country.”

Sanders said he would “love” to run against Trump and noted many opinion polls showed him faring better against him than Clinton did. He and Clinton urged voters to compare the substance of their debate with the Republican versions, which last week featured name-calling and Trump defending his penis size.

“We are, if elected president, going to invest a lot of money in mental health,” Sanders said, then cracked a joke. “And when you watch these Republican debates, you know why we need to invest in mental health.”

Trump frequently says he will beat either Clinton or Sanders. “I am the one person that she does not want to run against,” he said of Clinton on Saturday.

The debate in Flint, which is suffering a water contamination and public health crisis, came as Sanders has struggled to slow Clinton’s march to the presidential nomination. Sanders picked up some good news on Sunday with a projected win in Maine’s caucus.

Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state and first lady, has spoken on the campaign trail of the need for more love and kindness, a contrast to Trump’s rhetoric about his plans to deport illegal immigrants and temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country.

“I don’t intend to get into the gutter with whoever they nominate, but instead to lift our sights,” Clinton said in the debate.

Describing herself as a “praying person,” she said it was hard to imagine living under the pressure of the White House “without being able to fall back on prayer and on my faith.”

Sanders, asked if he was deliberately keeping his Jewish faith in the background on the campaign trail, said his father’s family was wiped out in the Holocaust. He described going shopping with his mother as a boy in Brooklyn, New York, and seeing people with numbers on their arms from Nazi concentration camps.

“I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being,” Sanders said.

‘DISASTROUS’ TRADE POLICIES

Earlier, the two candidates exchanged angry jabs over trade, with Sanders accusing Clinton of backing “disastrous” trade policies that moved manufacturing jobs out of cities like Flint and Detroit and shifted them overseas.

But Clinton said Sanders’ opposition to the 2009 auto bailout, a crucial issue in a state that is home to the U.S. auto industry, would have cost millions of jobs. The bailout, which Clinton supported, passed Congress and has been credited with helping save the U.S. industry.

Sanders, 74 a U.S. senator from Vermont and democratic socialist, also questioned the sincerity of Clinton’s conversion to opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal.

The two contenders cut each other off on several occasions, a rare occurrence in a race that has been much more polite than the raucous Republican presidential campaign.

“Excuse me, I’m talking,” Sanders said to Clinton when she tried to interrupt. “If you’re going to talk, tell the whole story,” Clinton responded.

Sanders pressed his charge that Clinton was too close to Wall Street and demanded again that she release the transcript of paid speeches she has given to Wall Street firms. Clinton said she would release them when all the candidates, including Republicans, also release transcripts of similar talks.

‘THERE AIN’T NOTHING!’

Throwing up his hands, Sanders said: “I’ll release it. Here it is. There ain’t nothing! I don’t give speeches to Wall Street!”

The debate was held in Flint to highlight the city’s water contamination crisis, and both candidates expressed outrage at Flint’s plight and demanded Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s resignation.

The crisis in Flint, a predominantly black city of 100,000, was triggered when an emergency city manager installed by Snyder switched the city’s water supply to the nearby Flint River from Lake Michigan to save money.

The change corroded Flint’s aging pipes and released lead and other toxins into the water supply, exposing thousands of residents including children to high lead levels that have sparked serious health problems.

(Additional reporting by Alana Wise, Luciana Lopez and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Caren Bohan and Peter Cooney)

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By Luciana Lopez and Steve Holland

LAS VEGAS/COLUMBIA, S.C. (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump rolled to victory on Saturday in South Carolina in a contest that saw former Florida Governor Jeb Bush drop out, while Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton beat back a strong challenge from Bernie Sanders in Nevada.

The victories by Trump and Clinton solidified their positions as the front-runners to win their parties’ respective presidential nominations ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

Bush suffered a distant fourth place finish in the Republican contest and announced he had suspended his campaign, ending his dream of becoming a third Bush president after his father and brother.

“The people of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken, and I really respect their decision,” an emotional Bush said in Columbia. He finished far out of the running in each of the first three states.

By winning both South Carolina and New Hampshire and holding leads in the 11 states that vote on March 1, Trump was arguably on track to win the nomination, an outcome that seemed astounding to contemplate when he got into the race last summer.

“It’s going to be very difficult for him to be derailed at this point,” said Hogan Gidley, who was a senior adviser to former Republican candidate Mike Huckabee.

Trump, 69, was declared the victor about an hour after polls closed in South Carolina.

“Let’s put this thing away,” Trump said in his victory speech in Spartanburg.

Trump was as feisty and anti-establishment as ever, denouncing TV pundits for saying that if his remaining opponents consolidated around one Trump alternative, there would be enough anti-Trump votes to beat him.

“These geniuses,” he said. “They don’t understand that as people drop out, I’m going to get a lot of those votes also. You don’t just add them together.”

He easily defeated Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who were in a close fight for second place and the right to declare themselves the anti-Trump alternative.

With 73 percent of South Carolina precincts reporting, Trump had 33.1 percent, followed by Rubio with 22.3 percent and Cruz with 21.7 percent.

It was Trump’s second victory in a row, an outcome that frightens establishment Republicans but thrills the “throw-the-bums-out” conservative base of the party that has long been fed up with Washington.

The bellicose New York billionaire had created some last-minute drama in South Carolina after Pope Francis said on Thursday his views on U.S. immigration were “not Christian.” Trump initially called Francis “disgraceful,” but later called him “a wonderful guy.”

Trump, who has also advocated a ban on Muslim immigrants to counter domestic terror threats, stirred fresh controversy on Friday when he told a crowd about a U.S. general who was said to have dipped bullets in pigs’ blood to kill Muslim prisoners a century ago.

After South Carolina, the Republican presidential campaign is about to rapidly pick up steam in March when dozens of states hold nominating contests. Another candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich, is concentrating on midwestern and northern states in the state-by-state contest to pick nominees for the Nov. 8 election.

Clinton’s victory in the Nevada Democratic caucuses, meanwhile, could help calm Democratic Party worries about the strength of her campaign.

Her win denied Sanders the breakthrough win he had sought in a state with a heavy minority population, but his ability to close a one-time double-digit polling lead for Clinton suggests the Democratic nominating race will be long and hard fought.

With 87 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton was leading with 52.5 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 47.4 percent. Vote counting was delayed in Nevada by heavy turnout.

Clinton’s victory buoyed worried supporters and gave her fresh momentum as she heads into the next contest in South Carolina on Feb. 27, where polls show her with a double-digit lead largely as a result of heavy support from black voters.

“Some may have doubted us, but we never doubted each other,” she told cheering supporters at a victory rally in Las Vegas. “This is your campaign.”

Sanders vowed to fight on and set his sights on the 11 states that vote on “Super Tuesday,” March 1. He predicted that when Democrats gather for their nominating convention in Philadelphia in July, “We are going to see the results of one of the great political upsets in the history of the United States.”

“The wind is at our banks,” he said. “We have the momentum.”

After routing Clinton in New Hampshire and finishing a strong second in Iowa, states with nearly all-white populations, Sanders had hoped to prove in Nevada that he could win over black and Hispanic voters and compete nationally as the race moves to states with more diverse populations.

But entrance polling in Nevada showed he badly lost among black voters, by 76 percent to 22 percent, a bad omen for South Carolina and other southern states with big black populations. He did win among Hispanics by 53 percent to 45 percent.

Clinton’s campaign has argued she would assert control of the Democratic race once it moved to more diverse states with black and Hispanic populations who have traditionally backed Clinton and have been slow to warm to Sanders.

(Reporting by Luciana Lopez and Steve Holland; Writing by John Whitesides, Steve Holland and Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Hay)

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