BOSTON (AP) — Preliminary results of a survey of Massachusetts voters in Tuesday’s elections, according to an exit poll conducted for The Associated Press:
DON’T MISS YOU MUCH
Massachusetts voters weren’t expected to favor former Gov. Mitt Romney over President Barack Obama. Romney found majority support in just one age group as Obama had a sweeping win in his rival’s home state. Voters between ages 40 and 49 preferred Romney, but 8 in 10 voters were outside that group. Romney also found a narrow majority of support among white men, but that was offset by white women, 6 of 10 of whom went for Obama. Among Romney’s strongest supporters were self-described conservatives, three-quarters of whom supported him. But they accounted for just 1 in 5 voters in the Bay State. Overall, voters didn’t have warm feelings for their former governor, with 58 percent viewing him unfavorably. Obama, by contrast, had a favorable rating from 61 percent of voters.
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BUT CAN I TRUST YOU?
Honesty and trustworthiness was the top quality about a third of voters had in mind when they were trying to choose between Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren. That was slightly ahead of whether the candidate “cares about people like me.” A willingness to compromise was most important to one in five voters, while political party affiliation mattered most to just 1 in 10 voters.
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LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Obama’s support across Massachusetts was geographically wide and deep. Two-thirds of voters in Boston and the surrounding urban and suburban areas preferred Obama. But the support extended to the more rural areas in western Massachusetts, where Obama won a clear majority of voters. The only area where Romney was preferred was the South Shore of Boston to Cape Cod, where the Republican pulled half the vote.
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ECONOMY ON THE BRAIN
The economy was the top issue on Massachusetts voters’ minds Tuesday, and nothing else was close. About two-thirds of voters chose that as their top issue, and Obama took their vote 53 percent to 44 percent. Health care was a distant second, with about 16 percent of voters considering that issue as most important. Nearly eight in 10 of those voters preferred Obama. Romney won a 52 to 44 percent majority among voters who considered the budget deficit the most important issue, about 10 percent of the electorate.
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NOT MANY SWINGERS
Massachusetts voters have apparently had their minds made up on the presidential race for quite a while. Nearly 8 in 10 voters said they knew who they were going to vote for before September.
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LET’S PLAY FAIR
Voters spread the blame for occasionally unfair play in the intense campaign between Brown and Warren. About a third thought that both Brown and Warren attacked their opponent unfairly at times. That’s larger than any group that said only one candidate was at fault. About a quarter of voters thought only Brown was unfair, while 1 in 5 voters said Warren was solely to blame for unfair attacks.
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MORE OR LESS
Just over half of Massachusetts voters said the government should do more to solve problems while a significant portion of Bay Staters, nearly five out of 10, believe government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.
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The preliminary exit poll of 1,173 Massachusetts voters was conducted for AP and the television networks by Edison Research in a random sample of 30 precincts statewide. Results were subject to sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points; it is higher for subgroups.
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Online: http://surveys.ap.org/exitpolls
