Highlights of voting in Saturday’s Republican primary in South Carolina and the Democratic and GOP caucuses in Nevada.
Religion counts. A quarter of Nevada GOP voters were Mormon, and virtually all preferred Mitt Romney.
Romney had the votes of nearly four in 10 white born-again and evangelical Christians in Nevada, compared with about a quarter who supported Mike Huckabee.
In South Carolina, born-again and evangelical voters were just more than half the voters.
The heart of the party. While John McCain and Huckabee split the votes of those in South Carolina calling themselves Republicans, McCain bettered him among independents, 42 percent to 25 percent. Independents were nearly a fifth of the overall GOP vote in the state.
Huckabee had a 35 percent to 26 percent edge over McCain among South Carolina conservatives, with Romney and Fred Thompson each getting nearly 20 percent.
In Nevada, Hillary Rodham Clinton defeated Barack Obama among self-identified Democrats by 51 percent to 39 percent, and they dominated the caucuses.
Republicans and conservatives dominated the Nevada GOP caucuses, and nearly six in 10 preferred Romney.
Issues that matter. Half of Nevada Democrats named the economy as the most significant problem, making it their overwhelming choice as the country’s top issue. About half of them favored Clinton, compared with four in 10 who chose Obama. Clinton also led among those citing health care as the top problem, while she and Obama split the vote of those who picked the Iraq war.
The economy and immigration were the issues most on the minds of Nevada Republicans, and Romney easily won with both groups.
The women are back . . . behind Clinton. She won their support over Obama by 51 percent to 38 percent. That’s a decisive margin because six in 10 Nevada Democrats at the caucuses were female. Obama edged Clinton among women in Iowa, but she came back and dominated them in New Hampshire.
Black, white and brown. Clinton carried the Nevada Democratic white vote, winning their support by 52 percent to 34 percent over Obama. That was crucial because they made up nearly two-thirds of the overall vote. In the first serious test between Clinton and Obama over black voters, eight in 10 blacks backed Obama.
Nearly two-thirds of Latinos voted for Clinton — a disappointment for Obama, who was endorsed by a heavily Latino union representing casino employees.
The military weighs in. Romney did equally well among Nevada Republicans who have served in the military and those who haven’t. That group is usually strongly for McCain.
The unions. Clinton and Obama split the union vote about evenly, with each getting the support of more than four in 10. John Edwards, who has long courted the union vote, got just 7 percent. Among the seven in 10 Democratic voters who are not in unions, Clinton prevailed.
The results were from a poll conducted for AP and the television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International as voters left 35 voting sites in South Carolina, and entered 20 Republican caucus sites and 30 Democratic ones in Nevada. The South Carolina Republican survey involved interviews with 1,154 voters, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. In Nevada, 833 GOP voters and 1,098 Democrats were interviewed, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 points for Republicans and 4 points for Democrats.
