PHOENIX — Much of the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination has been defined by Mitt Romney’s failure to win over conservative voters despite several marquee victories in the party’s nominating contests.
Yet, exit polling in both Michigan and Arizona — states in which Romney avoided what would have been crippling defeats on Tuesday — show that the former Massachusetts governor is finally growing his support among a broader cross-section of Republican voters as he heads into the 10-state Super Tuesday contests that could finally cement his claim to his party’s nomination.
By far, voters this election cycle said they want a nominee they believe has the experience needed to corral stubbornly high unemployment and defeat President Obama in a general election expected to be closely contested regardless of which Republican emerges with the nomination from this feisty fight.
“This is a critical time for America. It’s our time for choosing, and this time we have to get the choice right,” Romney said during a victory speech after Tuesday’s contests, which included the largest group of voters so far who didn’t wait until the last minute to pick a candidate, exit polls showed.
In Michigan and even more so in Arizona, Romney led among every voting bloc except the poorest, youngest and least-educated voters. Still, his chief rival, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, maintains a grip on Tea Party and born-again Christian conservatives who still consider Romney too moderate.
That trend bodes well for Romney, who has endured more roadblocks than expected but who has collected the most convention delegates in the earliest state primaries.
The two states in which college-educated voters were split were the states Romney lost: Iowa, which Santorum won, and South Carolina, where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich bested Romney. But better-educated voters have since coalesced around Romney, even as Santorum dismissed Obama as a “snob” for suggesting that all students continue their education after high school.
Romney won white evangelical voters in Nevada and a plurality of those voters in Florida after trailing among such voters in both Iowa and South Carolina, exit polls show. But he needs to win over more of those voters if he’s going to win big in the South, including Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma next Tuesday.
Santorum did not perform as well among blue-collar voters as expected in Michigan, narrowly carrying a bloc he needed to offset Romney’s strength among upper-middle-class voters and establishment Republicans.
In Michigan, more than 60 percent of primary voters said they would support whomever carried the Republican nomination, a group with which Romney easily outperformed Santorum.
And as the debate schedule has lightened in recent weeks, the forums appear to factor less in shaping voters’ decisions. The nationally televised debates in part fueled the surge of Gingrich in South Carolina and prompted questions about Romney, whom many conservatives felt lacked the tenacity to take on Obama in the fall.
Just 35 percent of GOP voters in Michigan said the debates affected their final decision, compared to less than half of conservative voters in Arizona — even with a debate held in Mesa just days before the state’s primary.
