Top takeaways from the Wisconsin primary

Tuesday was a bad day for the front-runners in Wisconsin, as Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton were both beaten in the Badger State primaries. Here are our top takeaways:

Cruz's breakthrough?

Prior to his win in Wisconsin, Ted Cruz’s strength was in caucuses — where his superior organization could outmatch Trump — and in primaries in his backyard, such as Texas, his home state, and Oklahoma. That suggests the rest of April won’t bode well for him, with primaries in states like New York (remember those attacks on Trump’s “New York values”?), Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Those don’t jump out as obvious Cruz targets, but then again, neither did Wisconsin. While Cruz may not have the calendar working in his favor, he represents something very powerful for many GOP voters: their last best hope for denying Trump the nomination.

Bernie Sanders does the Energizer Bunny

The Vermont senator rolled to his sixth victory in the last seven Democratic contests (seven of eight if the Democrats Abroad primary is factored in), and while he still trails Hillary Clinton in both pledged delegates and "superdelegates," the fact of the matter is, he keeps winning states and could pick up another victory Saturday in Wyoming's caucuses.

Still, some Democrats are unimpressed.

And that's in large part because Sanders' path to the nomination hasn't become much clearer than it was before his recent winning streak. Just as Obama was able to build a delegate lead that he would never relinquish despite later Clinton victories in 2008, Clinton appears to have established a clear and possibly insurmountable advantage by virtue of her huge wins in March, particularly in the South where her margins of victory far outpace Sanders' advantage Tuesday in Wisconsin.

But Sanders has shown he knows how to win, far more than anyone expected. He also proved again he knows how to talk. On a night when the front-runners opted for either a statement or a tweet, Sanders delivered a half-hour victory speech in Wyoming.

It's getting late

It's not that uncommon for nominating contests to drag into April — Rick Santorum didn't drop out of the 2012 GOP race and hand the nomination to Mitt Romney until April 10 of that year, and in 2008, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled until June. But the winners in both of those races had nominating conventions at the end of August. This year, the Republican convention starts July 18 and the Democratic convention kicks off a week later. So if either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump plans to have a well-choreographed coronation, they better have some very strong victories in the next couple of weeks.

Marco Rubio is still in third

Three weeks after he dropped out of the presidential race, Marco Rubio still has more delegates (171) than Ohio Gov. John Kasich.. After winning his home-state primary March 15, Kasich has not won a state or even a delegate, and at this point he is simply hoping to hold on for a potential floor fight at the Republican convention in Cleveland. It seems likely if he stays in the race that he will be able to eventually overtake Rubio, but there is no way for him to catch up to Trump and Cruz. His campaign manager issued a memo Tuesday gleefully proclaiming that Ted Cruz and Donald Trump "both effectively admitted they will not reach the GOP Convention with enough bound delegates to be the nominee."

New York values may be yuuuuge

Trump has had a terrible week, and he has to hope he can take comfort from home cooking in New York's primary next Tuesday. There will be 95 Republican delegates at stake, the biggest single prize until California votes June 7. His campaign issued a venomous statement Tuesday saying that super PACs, Republican establishment figures, talk-radio hosts and a bunch of other bad people ganged up on him to boost Ted Cruz in Wisconsin. Cruz "is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump," the statement said. "We have total confidence that Mr Trump will go on to win in New York, where he holds a substantial lead in all the polls, and beyond."