NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The battle for the South has settled into a race between two candidates, and neither is Marco Rubio.

In interviews with more than two dozen party officials, political operatives and activists, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump were repeatedly named as front-runners and likely winners in one of the most conservative regions of the country. Both contenders draw huge crowds and appeal to large swaths of middle- and lower-income white Republican Southerners, who are deeply angry with Washington.

Cruz has Trump, and the rest of the field, beat on organization, but Trump still lures the bigger audiences. And there is an increasing acknowledgment, even among the Republican elite, that the billionaire real estate developer has a committed base here, some of whom are likely voters and not the political celebrity gawkers many mainstream GOP operatives have guessed.

“Amongst a lot of the grass roots, Sen. Cruz is definitely picking up momentum, there’s no doubt about it,” said Ryan Haynes, the unaligned chairman of the Tennessee GOP.

Williamson County GOP Chairman Julie Hannah Taleghani agreed that Cruz and Trump, who have spent significant time in the state, have the most momentum, and noted, "I have to honestly say, the Trump campaign" is building an organization as well. 

Certainly, Rubio’s not out; a viable path remains here for the candidate, who has spent considerable resources building infrastructure in the South. Rubio has a long list of legislative endorsements in Tennessee, Alabama and elsewhere in the region. Particularly in this more moderate part of Tennessee, many people are torn between Rubio and Cruz.

But the feeling on the ground is that Cruz has the momentum with conservative activists and that there’s some true support behind Trump’s high poll numbers, much as many party stalwarts wish otherwise. And while Rubio is generating considerable interest among more centrist Republican voters, he’s being squeezed not just on the right by Cruz but in the moderate lane by Jeb Bush and Chris Christie.

“Rubio’s got a lot of names, prominent elected officials; he’s the establishment darling right now,” said Chris Brown, a Birmingham, Alabama, consultant who is backing Bush. “But that is not contributing to rank-and-file voters. They are more Cruz-oriented.”

In Nashville on Tuesday, Cruz celebrated both his 45th birthday and a new poll that, for the first time, showed him within striking distance of Trump nationally. The Quinnipiac poll released that morning found Trump, the persistent national poll-leader, coming in at 28 percent, with Cruz pulling in 24 percent — within the margin of error.

“I did think it was interesting, Donald said a couple of days ago that he felt that the Republican race could come down just to him and me, and I think he may well be right,” Cruz said. “If you look at the polling numbers, we are surging in the polls, and Donald may be right that this is turning more and more into a two-man race between Donald Trump and me. If that’s the case, the decision will be made by the voters: Who has the experience, the record, who has been the most consistent conservative?”

The event Tuesday afternoon appeared smaller than Cruz’s rallies over the weekend in Alabama, where he drew crowds of well over a thousand at two separate stops and frequently brought attendees to their feet. But it was not more staid despite being held in relatively more liberal Nashville.

The event at times felt like a Christian revival, with Cruz introducing the man who helped him and his father become religious, and many in the room joined in praying for Cruz as he spoke about his faith journey, a move that plays well with deeply observant voters in the South.
Most of the room remained standing for the entirety of Cruz’s stump speech, frequently chiming in with applause and remarks like “that’s right” and “amen.”

“If I am elected president … ” Cruz began.

“When!” replied a chorus of people.

But it’s Trump who holds the lead, Quinnipiac survey aside, and party leaders say enthusiasm for him on the ground is undeniable.

“To me, traditional rally folks are not going to be pounding on the doors trying to get in, but that was happening,” Taleghani said of a recent Trump event in nearby Franklin. “These people were there, they stood for hours in the rain, even if they couldn’t get in, they were still trying to despite the fire marshal [saying the event was full]. When I say pounding, I’m talking pounding. They didn’t want to miss out on this. That’s something I just haven’t seen a lot of.”

The sense that Cruz and Trump are enjoying the most momentum comes in part because their supporters tend to be louder than some of the more business-oriented centrist Republicans who are interested in Rubio, suggested Haynes, the Tennessee GOP chairman.

“A lot of their supporters are more vocal. It doesn’t mean there’s not significant support for other candidates,” he said. “It’s not that Rubio’s people aren’t enthusiastic, they’re just not as expressive.”

But outside of Nashville, in more conservative corners of Tennessee and certainly in Alabama, Cruz and Trump are notably gaining strength because of their hard-line stances on immigration, one policy area in which Rubio has a substantively more moderate record. Stylistically too, the no-compromise rhetoric of Cruz and Trump plays well.

“People in Alabama are generally considered to be very polite, with Southern manners, but they are also people who shoot pretty straight,” said Jonathan Gray, a Mobile, Alabama-based GOP consultant who is currently unaligned and sees Rubio resonating in third place, after Trump and Cruz. “You’re not going to have to guess where people stand. That’s something people appreciate about Trump.”

Cruz stressed in a news conference that he wants to run a “populist” campaign, mimicking an approach Trump has taken. The senator has so far taken a kid-gloves approach to the national poll leader, expressing only the minimum level of disagreement with some of Trump’s most controversial proposals, to the outrage of national Republicans who see that as a nakedly political move to position himself as a Trump alternative if and when the mogul’s numbers go down.

But if Cruz won’t directly criticize the person who looks to be his biggest competitor as the SEC primary nears, his supporters will.

“Trump opens his mouth too much,” said Bonnie Austin, 47, of Leeds, Alabama, who saw Cruz at rally near Birmingham on Sunday. “Cruz will win Iowa, he’ll also get Alabama. We’re Christian, conservative and scared. Cruz is sincere, intelligent and a patriot.”