Despite strong evangelical push, Cruz fails to win a single South Carolina county

Ted Cruz's strategy to win the South Carolina Republican primary by appealing to evangelical voters failed Saturday when the Texas senator finished in third place, trailing just behind Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and failing to win a single county.

Republican voters instead overwhelmingly went for billionaire businessman Donald Trump, and handed the casino tycoon a decisive victory that saw him winning 44 of the Palmetto State's 46 counties.

Rubio, for his part, carried two counties.

Cruz not only failed to win a single county, but he also lost the evangelical vote to Trump. This comes despite an intense push this month by the Texas senator's campaign surrogates to appeal to the largest religious denomination in South Carolina.

"The strength of this nation will not be this Constitution, but the laws of God that the Constitution is based on. You get rid of God, you get him out and keep him from being your anchor — when you start allowing men to determine what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is evil," he added. "You let men do it and they do not vet it with through this book. Our Founding Fathers warned us over and over again, what you will end up doing is saying, 'Well, now I know it sounds like a violation of commandment number six, which says do not murder, but we're just going to go ahead and tell these ladies — ladies in America — they can kill their children."