Most of Ohio’s GOP primary electorate says it’s important that their next US senator show support for Donald Trump, according to the initial results of CNN’s exit poll for the state’s Republican presidential and Senate primaries.
Roughly 7 in 10 say it’s at least somewhat important that the next senator support the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, with more than half saying it’s very important.
Nearly 8 in 10 say they approve of Trump’s job performance when he was in the White House, with about two-thirds saying they expect that, if he returns to the Oval Office, a second Trump term would be better than his first. About two-thirds say they’d consider Trump fit for office even if he’s convicted of a crime. And only about one-third acknowledge that President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election was legitimate. Those results echo entrance and exit polls in Republican presidential contests earlier this year in highlighting the extent to which the GOP electorate has molded itself around the former president’s influence.
Tuesday’s primary is this year’s first test of Trump’s endorsement power in a contested Senate race. The winner of the GOP nod will take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in a race that could shape the balance of power in the Senate. The three-term incumbent is one of two Democrats running for reelection in a state that Trump twice carried.
Roughly 8 in 10 voters supporting businessman Bernie Moreno – Trump’s preferred candidate in the Senate primary – say that it’s very important that Ohio’s next senator back Trump. By contrast, loyalty to Trump is similarly important to only about half of those supporting Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and fewer than one-third of those backing state Sen. Matt Dolan.
Exit polls are a valuable tool to help understand primary voters’ demographic profile and political views. Like all surveys, however, exit polls are estimates, not precise measurements of the electorate. That’s particularly true for the preliminary set of exit poll numbers, which haven’t yet been weighted to match the final results of the primary. But the results provide a glimpse of the types of voters turning out.
Voters in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary are largely split between saying the Republican Party as a whole is insufficiently conservative or about right ideologically, with only about one-fifth saying the party is too conservative; 8 in 10, meanwhile, describe themselves as conservatives. About three-quarters say that undocumented immigrants in the US should be deported, rather than being offered a chance to apply for legal status. Ohio GOP primary voters are also more likely than not to favor a nationwide ban on most or all abortions – a position that was opposed by a majority of GOP presidential primary voters in California, Virginia and New Hampshire.
Few Ohio GOP primary voters describe the nation’s economy as excellent or good, but most, about three-quarters, say that they are holding steady or getting ahead financially. About 9 in 10 say they’re unhappy with the way things are going in the US, with about 4 in 10 describing themselves as angry about the state of the nation.
The exit poll for Ohio’s Republican primaries was conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. It includes 1,197 interviews with Republican primary voters, including both Election Day voters and those who voted early or absentee. Election Day interviews were conducted across 30 different polling places on Election Day, while pre-election interviews were conducted March 8-16 using telephone, email and text messaging to reach respondents selected from the voter file. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.0 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.
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