Exit poll: Ideologies divide Ohio primary voters

Asso­ci­ated Press

Ohio vot­ers divided along ide­o­log­i­cal lines between Mitt Rom­ney and Rick San­to­rum on Tues­day, accord­ing to results from an exit poll in the state. Vot­ers were focused on find­ing a can­di­date who could defeat Pres­i­dent Barack Obama in Novem­ber, and nearly two-thirds said they were com­mit­ted to back­ing the even­tual Repub­li­can nom­i­nee no mat­ter who wins.

TOP ISSUES:

More than half of Ohio vot­ers said the econ­omy was their top issue. Among those, Rom­ney claimed about 4 in 10 vot­ers. The next most impor­tant issue to vot­ers in Ohio was the fed­eral bud­get deficit, with about a quar­ter of vot­ers cit­ing it as their top issue. Rom­ney ran slightly ahead of San­to­rum among those vot­ers. Vot­ers ranked abor­tion and ille­gal immi­gra­tion far behind in terms of elec­tion issues.

IDEOLOGICAL DIVIDE:

Almost all vot­ers expressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, includ­ing more than one in three vot­ers say­ing they were angry about the way Wash­ing­ton is work­ing. Those who said they are “angry” about the way the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is work­ing tilted toward Rom­ney over San­to­rum by a 7-point mar­gin. Fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives were about evenly divided, though San­to­rum car­ried the “very con­ser­v­a­tive” by a 9-point margin.

RELIGIOUS VOTERS:

Just under half of GOP pri­mary vot­ers iden­ti­fied them­selves as born-again or evan­gel­i­cal, and San­to­rum won roughly half of them. Rom­ney, a Mor­mon, per­formed bet­ter among Roman Catholics in Ohio — who made up about a third of the elec­torate — than either San­to­rum or Gin­grich, who are both Catholic. Roughly 4 in 10 Catholic vot­ers favored Romney.

BEATING OBAMA:

About 4 in 10 called a candidate’s abil­ity to defeat Obama the most impor­tant qual­ity guid­ing their deci­sions, far above those who said it was impor­tant a can­di­date be a true con­ser­v­a­tive or have strong moral char­ac­ter. Rom­ney was seen as the can­di­date with the best chance to defeat Obama by about half of voters.

EDUCATION:

San­to­rum had a nar­row lead over Rom­ney among vot­ers with a high school degree or less, often an indi­ca­tor of blue-collar sup­port, indi­cat­ing San­to­rum may not have been as suc­cess­ful in his out­reach to blue-collar vot­ers. On the other end of the spec­trum, Rom­ney had a 10-point lead among vot­ers with a master’s degree or higher.

The Ohio sur­vey was con­ducted for The Asso­ci­ated Press and the tele­vi­sion net­works by Edi­son Research as vot­ers left 40 selected polling places in the state. The Ohio poll involved inter­views with 2,728 vot­ers and has a mar­gin of sam­pling error of plus or minus 3 per­cent­age points.

Posted by AP News on Mar 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.