Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is facing backlash from critics who challenge his claim that "the overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats."

In the wake of the deadly shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado on Friday, the Texas senator told radio host Hugh Hewitt that Democrats and the media are trying to politicize mass killings in an attempt to hurt the Republican Party. He also dismissed claims that the right's popular anti-abortion rhetoric could have influenced the gunman to attack the pro-abortion clinic.

"Every time you have some sort of violent crime or mass killing, you could almost see the media salivating, hoping desperately that the murderer happens to be a Republican so they can use it to try to paint their political enemies," Cruz said, according to CNN.

He went on to say that most violent criminals are registered Democrats, which is why the party supports the effort to reinstate voting rights for ex-felons.

"Now listen, here's the simple and undeniable fact. The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats," Cruz said to the conservative radio host. "The media doesn't report that. What they report, and there's a reason why the Democrats for years have been viewed as soft on crime, because they go in and they appoint to the bench judges who release violent criminals."

He added that Democrats "fight to give the right to vote to convicted felons. Why? Because the Democrats know convicted felons tend to vote Democrat."

The Tea Party favorite also said he believes Democrats are soft on crime because "an overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats."

Following the interview, a rep for the Cruz campaign said the lawmaker was citing data found in the research study titled "Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?" In the study, University of Pennsylvania's Marc Meredith and Stanford University's Michael Morse found that ex-felons who register to vote in only three specific states -- North Carolina, New York and New Mexico -- have overwhelmingly registered as Democrats.

The study also states that most ex-felons in New York registered as Democrats after being convicted, but that does not mean that they were Democrats at the time they committed their crimes.

In response to Cruz's comments about ex-felons, Morse argued "Cruz is misinterpreting our research" by mischaracterizing ex-felons as violent criminals. In reality, only a small share of ex-felons are convicted of violent crimes, notes The Washington Post.

"We only calculate the registration rates by party for discharged felons, and do not break this down by type of crime ... So our work cannot speak to the partisanship of 'violent criminals,'" the researcher said to FactCheck.org.

Morse added that there is no evidence to support Cruz's claim that the research citied in those three states is also true on a national level.

"Ex-felons' partisan affiliations vary across states and I don't think there's enough evidence to claim that the national ex-felon population is 'overwhelmingly Democratic,' at least in terms of party registration," he said. "There is more evidence that ex-felons are not very supportive of the Republican Party."

When questioned about his remarks, which seem to misrepresent the facts in the study, Cruz doubled down on his statements, telling ABC News that he was "engaging in a process that is called 'reasonable inference.'"

"An inference is actually rational reasoning, which people do all the time," he said.

He added, "When elected Democrats push to give felons the right to vote, it is a perfectly rational and reasonable inference to say those Democrats understand that the overwhelming majority of violent criminals vote Democratic."