A new poll shows US Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has pulled into a statistical dead heat with front-runner Donald Trump, as the Texas senator appeared poised to pick up a key victory in Wisconsin's primary.
Cruz's recent gains mark the first time since November that one of Trump's rivals has threatened his lead in support among Republicans, coinciding with missteps by the New York real estate mogul that include a gaffe about abortion and the arrest of his campaign manager on battery charges.
Cruz got 35.2 per cent of support to Trump's 39.5 per cent, the Reuters/Ipsos national poll of 568 Republicans taken between April 1-5 showed on Tuesday.
The numbers put the two within the poll's 4.8 percentage-point credibility interval, a measure of accuracy.
Cruz and Trump were also briefly in a dead heat early last week.
But as recently as a month ago, when Senator Marco Rubio was also still a candidate, Cruz trailed Trump in Reuters/Ipsos polling by about 20 points.
Ohio Governor John Kasich, the only other Republican now remaining in the race for the party's nomination, placed third in the poll with 18.7 per cent.
Cruz appeared poised for victory in Wisconsin's nominating contest on Tuesday, according to opinion polls in the state.
He hopes a Wisconsin victory will deliver a powerful message that he can unite disparate factions of the party and break Trump's momentum.
Facing possible defeat in Wisconsin, Trump proposed blocking money transfers to Mexico by undocumented immigrants as a way to pressure Mexico to pay for a border wall, a key component of his controversial immigration plan, which has won votes in other states.
Trump's campaign said in a memo that if elected, he would use a US anti-terrorism law to cut off remittances from people living in the United States illegally.
The memo elaborated on an idea Trump floated in August, when he suggested seizing all remittances tied to "illegal wages".
Asked about Trump's remittances plan, Democratic President Barack Obama called it unworkable.
Trump's support has faltered among women in particular after saying in a March 30 interview women who end pregnancies could face punishment if abortion was illegal. He later reversed himself to say doctors who provide abortions should be held responsible.
He was also criticised for standing by his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, after the aide was arrested on misdemeanour battery charges in an incident with a journalist.
In the Democratic race, US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a slender lead in opinion polls in Wisconsin over front-runner Hillary Clinton, but she maintained her lead nationally in a Reuters/Ipsos poll also released on Tuesday.
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