SALON

Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012 5:09 AM UTC

Romney, Santorum Show Ohio GOP Ideological Divide

By and

Topics: From the Wires,

Romney, Santorum Show Ohio GOP Ideological DivideBob Belew, a coach at Sylvan Park Elementary School in Nashville, Tenn., welcomes students and voters at a polling place at the school, on Tuesday, March 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)(Credit: AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney was propelled by moderate and secular voters in Ohio’s Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, an exit poll of voters showed. Rick Santorum drew robust support from the state’s most ardent conservatives and eked out a modest lead among blue-collar people, whom he has targeted in his drive to slow Romney’s march toward the GOP nomination.

Ohio was the most closely watched of the 10 states holding Super Tuesday presidential contests. With many viewing the state as one of Santorum’s best chances of emerging as the singular challenger to Romney, the two men were appealing to different ideological wings of the party.

In two states where Santorum triumphed, Oklahoma and Tennessee, the former Pennsylvania senator was buoyed by voters who said their choices were influenced by religion, the exit polls showed.

More than two-thirds of voters in both of those states said a candidate’s religious beliefs were an important factor in their decisions. Santorum has frequently spoken about his Catholicism and the role it has played in his life.

On a night on which Santorum and Romney traded victories across the map, there was a potentially ominous sign for the GOP as voters signaled only lukewarm attachment toward even their own candidate.

Only in three states did most people say they strongly supported the contender they backed, nowhere reaching 6 in 10 saying so. In the four other states where polling was conducted Tuesday, fewer than half expressed that degree of support for their candidate.

In Ohio, Santorum had a near 20 percentage point lead among voters considering themselves very conservative, and was faring especially well with people who are conservative on social issues like gay marriage and abortion. He was also doing strongly with born-again and evangelical voters, and had more than a 2-1 advantage over Romney with people saying it was very important that they share religious beliefs with their chosen candidate.

While Santorum spent much of his campaign seeking to cement bonds with working-class voters by citing his upbringing in Pennsylvania coal country and stressing U.S. manufacturing, he had only a small lead over Romney among people without college degrees — a common measurement for the blue-collar vote.

Romney was leading among all but the most ardently conservative voters in Ohio and those who are not born-again Christians. He was also capturing a majority of those saying they want a candidate who can defeat President Barack Obama this fall, and was leading among voters saying their most important issue is the economy.

The one-time Massachusetts governor also did well among college graduates, senior citizens and people from families earning over $100,000 annually.

Santorum’s Oklahoma win was fed by a roughly 15 percentage point advantage among those religiously oriented voters over both Romney and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who was struggling to keep his candidacy afloat. In Tennessee, Santorum’s lead over those two men among people looking for a religious match with their candidate was nearly 2-1.

Another Santorum source of strength in Tennessee were blue-collar voters, who were giving him modest but clear leads over his competitors in both states. He was running about evenly with Gingrich among those voters in Oklahoma but ahead of Romney.

One of Romney’s chief selling points is his assertion that his business background gives him expertise on handling the economy, but Tennessee and Oklahoma voters were not giving him much of an edge on that issue. Romney and Santorum were running about even among Tennessee voters who consider the economy the top issue in the election, while Oklahoma voters focused on the economy gave Romney only a small advantage over Santorum and Gingrich.

The campaign’s persistent criticism of Romney’s wealth and background as a private equity executive may be hurting him, the exit surveys showed.

Asked in Ohio and Tennessee which candidate best understands the problems confronted by average Americans, Romney scored poorly. Around a third in each state picked Santorum while only about a fifth named Romney.

In Massachusetts, Romney performed strongly among all types of voters.

But that state’s GOP voters expressed displeasure with the health care coverage program enacted while Romney was governor, with 51 percent saying the measure had gone too far. Romney has been criticized for that plan by his GOP rivals and has pledged, if elected, to repeal Obama’s national health care overhaul, which resembles Romney’s Massachusetts measure.

In Georgia, an exit poll of GOP voters there shows the victory there by Gingrich, who represented the state in Congress for two decades, was propelled by people saying the former speaker’s ties to the state were important.

Gingrich won 78 percent of the votes of Georgia Republicans saying his relationship to the state affected their vote, according to the survey.

Around 6 in 10 said his Georgia roots mattered little to them, and those voters were divided roughly evenly among Gingrich, Romney and Santorum.

In Vermont, Romney did strongly among rank-and-file Republicans. Texas Rep. Ron Paul ran solidly among the 4 in 10 independent voters.

In Virginia, where only Romney and Paul were on the ballot, Romney performed strongly across most categories of voters.

On two subjects, voters in each of the states voting Tuesday had the same view.

Given a choice of four issues, Republicans in every state named the economy as the one that most concerns them. Given four qualities to look for in a candidate, the one cited most often was an ability to defeat Obama in November’s general election.

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.

Edison Research also conducted interviews at randomly chosen polling places in Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

___

AP News survey specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

___

Online:

http://surveys.ap.org/exitpolls/march6method.htm

More Alan Fram.

More Jennifer Agiesta.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
289 points290 points | 61 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
256 points257 points | 10 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
199 points200 points | 1 comment
vote
Today in How Did I Miss This: Iowa GOP is pushing to cut the pay of the remaining Supreme Court Justices that voted for legalization of gay marriage.
94 points95 points | 10 comments
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
54 points55 points | 8 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations