Talk Elections

@postpolls
Just under 60% are Republicans in #MIPrimary prelim exit polls, it was only lower in New Hampshire (49%)

@postpolls
About 10% of early voters in #MIPrimary are Democrats, higher than any other early state so far

An exit poll of voters in Michigan's Republican presidential primary is showing that more than 4 in 10 say they support the federal bailout of the auto industry.

Preliminary results of the survey also show that nearly 1 in 4 voters say they are from households with a union member.

It could be a long night – Conservative Intel and JMC Polling & Analytics have just gotten the results of our exclusive exit polling of likely voters in the Michigan Republican primary. At this moment, Michigan is too close to call with Romney at 39% and Santorum at 38%, with a 5% margin of error.

The results:

Mitt Romney: 39%
Rick Santorum: 38%
Ron Paul: 14%
Newt Gingrich: 9%

I am told the sample for this poll is Michiganders who have voted early, have voted today, or who told the pollster they will be voting by the end of the day.

@nytpolls
Early exits in MI -- 6 in 10 say they're conservative; 3 in 10 say they're very conservative.

@fivethirtyeight
AP says Michigan exit poll sample consisted of about 25% early/absentee voters -- higher than most pollsters were assuming.

Initial polling data out of Michigan:

By party affiliation
Democrat 10%
Independent 31%
Republican 59%

PARTY: Six in 10 voters in today’s Michigan Republican primary describe themselves as Republicans, about 10 points fewer than in 2008. (But it’s been lower, just 48 percent in 2000, and also was lower this year in New Hampshire.) Independents account for three in 10 voters, Democrats, as noted, one in 10. In past contests Romney generally has done better with mainline Republicans than with non-Republicans.

QUALITIES: A third of voters say they’re most interested in electability — the candidate with the best chance to defeat Obama. That has been a strong Romney group in previous contests. But two other attributes are close behind: experience and strong moral character, each picked by about a quarter of voters. In a result potentially unhelpful to Santorum, fewer — about one in seven — say they’re looking mainly for the true conservative in the race. And in a separate question, slightly more than half see Romney as most likely to defeat President Obama in November, double the number who say so about Santorum.

UNION and BAILOUT: Just under a quarter of voters are from union households, continuing a downward path from 2004 and 2008 in their share of the electorate. Romney did better among non-union than among union voters in 2008, and tried to tie Santorum to “big labor” this year.
More GOP voters in the state disapprove than approve of the federal government’s automaker bailout, but not by a wide margin — 51-43 percent, perhaps a surprising level of support in this particular population, given the party’s customary laissez-faire approach. Romney and Santorum both opposed the bailout.

ISSUES: More than half of Michigan voters say the economy’s the most important issue in their vote, by far the top rated issue; just under a quarter named the federal budget deficit; one in seven pick abortion, with illegal immigration in the low single digits. Also on the economy, three in 10 had a job loss or layoff in their household in the past three years.
At the better-off end of the spectrum, three in 10 voters report household incomes over $100,000 a year, another group that’s been good for Romney in previous contests this year.

DEBATE/DECISION: About a third of voters call the last pre-primary debate important in their vote today. And about a quarter decided in the last few days, down from a third who said so in 2008. That means three-quarters decided earlier, a group that in most previous contests has tended to be a better one for Romney.

As was the case in every previous exit poll conducted in this nomination race, voters in the Arizona Republican primary overwhelmingly picked the economy as their No. 1 issue in deciding whom to support (about half of all responses). The second biggest issue cited by voters was the budget deficit (about one-third of responses). The economy was the top issue concern for supporters of Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum and Newt Gingrich, but supporters of Representative Ron Paul felt that the budget deficit was more important.

Also repeating the pattern found in other exit polls this season, Arizona Republican primary voters said that the most important candidate quality was the ability to beat Mr. Obama (nearly two in five responses). While this was true among supporters of Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum and Mr. Gingrich, supporters of Mr. Paul were more likely to say that being a true conservative was the candidate quality they prized most (about one in three responses).

Half of Republican primary goers in Arizona said that a candidate sharing their religious beliefs was somewhat or greatly important to their vote.

Just as in 2008, about one in five voters said they believed abortion should be illegal in all cases.

While 40 percent of Republican primary voters in Florida said that most illegal immigrants working in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for citizenship, in Arizona this option received the support of only one in three – about equal to the number saying they should be deported.

The problem is, it's not like they first count absentees everywhere. It was in early counts that Santorum's been ahead - recently, Romney lead has been steadily growing, not falling (it's now about 9500 votes).

It's been over for awhile. Oh well. Holding out hope for Ohio and such next week

So far, about 65,000 votes have been counted in Mitt Romney's stronghold of Oakland County, Mich., even though only about 17 percent of its precincts have reported. That would put it on a pace to considerably exceed the 133,000 votes that the county cast in 2008, a good sign for Mr. Romney.

Still, it may be that some of the largest precincts in Oakland County have reported while the smaller ones have not, or that the vote count is heavy with early and absentee ballots. So the vote pace will probably slow down somewhat.

For whatever reason, there's been considerable narrowing in Wayne County.

Mr. Romney is leading in Oakland County by 15 percentage points based on votes counted there so far, slightly behind his 2008 margin of 20 percent but probably good enough to put him on a winning trajectory with a strong turnout there.

1 + 2 = Loss of momentum for Santorum -> worsening media image -> more difficult to fund raise

Bottom line: not a good night for Santorum, boost for Romney

Yup, more than half of the votes in and Romney has a 4-points lead. It's over.

Face reality. The likelihood of Santorum overcoming such a lead is near zero now.

The republican nomination is not over at all, but Romney should get a boost coming out of these primaries. He has not really been able to profit from his boosts in the past, though.

Detroit is still underrepresented in the votes we have now. It seems quite unlikely that Santorum could get the kind of margin he'd need to still win with those outstanding votes.

For Dems, it was 50% Santorum, 18% Romney, and 10% of the voters. So that translates into a 3.2% margin .1(.50-.18), which means that whatever margin Mittens wins by in MI will be 3.2% less than if Dems had not been allowed to vote in the GOP primary. Which further means that among GOP and independents, who are voting for whom their prefer, as opposed to Dems, who mostly or at least in very substantial numbers are voting for whom they want Obama to oppose, the win by Romney is pretty substantial among voters who plan to vote GOP in the General.

I don't think the Dems who voted in the GOP primary in MI are mostly "Reagan Democrats."

They do that by registration, not ideology. You can't kick out moderates if they are Republican.

Rick did not do very well with all those blue or semi-blue  collar Catholics in Macomb, or for that matter Saginaw. Catholics are pretty consistently so far voting for the LDS Mittens, rather than the true blue Catholic Santorum.

A win is a win, especially when reported as such.  The margin really doesn't matter - nor does the fact that it looks like Santorum will win more delegates, if the AP tallies hold.

Well, I think Romney has finally locked down the nomination.

Michigan Primary
February 28, 2012
92.4% reporting (4833/5233)

Romney - 382,340 (41.1%)
Santorum - 351,370 (37.8%)
Paul - 109,016 (11.7%)
Gingrich - 60,681 (6.5%)
Perry - 1,816 (0.2%)
Bachmann - 1,702 (0.2%)
Huntsman - 1,638 (0.2%)
Cain - 1,192 (0.1%)

Romney at 47.5% in Arizona with 73.6% reporting

Unfortunately, it's not in any Excel-readable format.  It looks like Santorum or Paul won the election day vote in many of the MI-13 precincts, but Romney won the absentees.  Without being able to put the data into Excel, I'm not sure which provided the larger margin, though quick eyeballing seems to give Santorum the win.