April 06, 2016 02:44 PM UTC

Everybody Hates Ted Cruz! Vote for Ted Cruz!

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• by: Colorado Pols

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won a big victory on Tuesday night in Wisconsin in a turn of events that Donald Trump haters hope marks the beginning of the end for His Hairness. But as Amber Phillips writes for the Washington Post, nobody really likes Cruz, either:

It’s hard to imagine a more far-right presidential candidate than Cruz, who has shown little to no willingness to appeal to the broader electorate that Republicans arguably need to win the White House and maintain control of the Senate. Some political analysts even think Republicans’ majority in the House could be in play with not just a Trump nomination, but also a Cruz nomination.

Okay, we should probably back up a little bit and say that it’s not true that “nobody” likes Cruz — he must have some actual supporters to have made it this far — but there isn’t much of a line forming for people interested in saying nice things about the Texas Senator:

Cruz is one of the least popular members — if not the least popular member — of the Senate among both Democrats and Republicans. Two out of his 53 Senate GOP colleagues have endorsed him, and those two — Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) — waited until March to do so. Graham made clear that he was holding his nose to support Cruz. He previously compared Trump and Cruz to being “poisoned” vs. being “shot.”

Okay, okay. So Cruz doesn’t have many fans among his colleagues in the Senate. Guess what? The American public isn’t particularly thrilled with Cruz, either:

More than half of Americans — 51 percent — already think of Cruz unfavorably, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. That’s nowhere near Trump’s 67 percent unfavorability rating. But it is on par with that of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, even as Cruz is less well-known. Cruz’s favorable rating (35 percent), meanwhile, is 11 points lower than Clinton’s (46 percent). He is not a popular guy.

Historians will long wonder about 2016 and how someone as genuinely unlikable as Ted Cruz could get so close to becoming President of the United States.