through ohio? why? i think rick santorum is a pretty solid candidate and resonates with the blue collar people there. he s being outspent 4 or 5-1 in that state. how much money does it take? a bigger question leading into the future is how much money will barack obama have against the eventual republican candidate? $800 million minimum. more. probably more. so if it comes down to money, that s something that has to be considered. ok, so we did do some exit polling to figure out what the people of as we look at i saw you with your clipboard and ear piece. thank you very much. the people of ohio, what did they say? the qualities that mattered the most to them, 42% said we want somebody who can beat the president. only 17% said the true acid test was whether or not they were a true conservative. moral character, 1 in 5. right experience, less than that. and a lot of 99% of the people say it s really cold outside, i don t want to answer anymore questions. the other on
issue here and that sen thiewsm. can romney and let s not get ahead of ourselves. is he a long way from the nomination. following your scenario can he get those people out to vote in november. shepard: that is the question. bottom of the screen we have added the election ticker. that will be up all night into the early hours of the morning. right now mostly virginia down there because that s the only thing we have been able to call and only thing coming in quickly. again, we are waiting right this moment for a decision on the state of virginia and on montana. and we are expecting that we may be able to call those quickly. in the meantime, we can learn a lot from exit polling. we are going to keep chris did i say montana? i meant vermont. apologies. we are going to keep carl and keep chris wallace with us and bring in martha maccallum. she has been watching over the exit polls throughout the day and monitoring those for us. what are we learning? interesting tale here, shep. newt g
states and compare them to the numbers for the five states where we have done exit polling earlier this year. in the seven stateswoman knee won 28% of voters who describe themselves as very conservative. smaller percentage than the 31% he won up to this point. 38% of ohio republicans and 40% of republicans in tennessee said romney is not fif snuff, double digits more than his competitives. across the seven states, only 33% of republicans who make less than 100,000 dlarz a year pick romney. only two in ten voters in ohio and tennessee who asked which better understand the amplg americans, they picked romney. he also has the connection problem with conservatives. it s all showing up in the exit polls. that s why he can t seem to land this plane. by the way, even though romney won ohio, fewer voters actually
newt gingrich tripled his total at 105. ron paul who did well in vermont and virginia. 1,144 is what you need to clinch this nomination. bill: a lot of voters leaving the polls saying the economy was priority number one. check out the exit polling we found. georgia 57% saying america s financial recovery was the most important issue. 54% in ohio. 50% in tennessee and 50% in oklahoma as well. martha: reaction is pouring in from every corner of the political world. the dust is settling after a long night. mitt romney s home state brought in more than 70 per of the vote. all candidates up late weighing
newt is in very bad shape his polling versus the president. unfortunately, now we are going to see the president engage in the same kind of politics. it s coming, coming from both sides. the big, powerful negative ad campaign run by the super pacs. in terms of understanding why it is too close to be in ohio, tamron hall has exit polling from ohio. what are you seeing? ravening, a lot of interesting information and you were talking with chris about ohio will matter tonight t is interesting how many people made their minds up in the last few days. we have talked a lot about momentum this year, we have seen momentum regarding mitt romney. let s look at the numbers. more than a quarter of ohio voters, take a look, rachel, 27%, made their minds up in the last few days. i want you to look when we break the numbers down, people that made their minds up in the last few days, mitt romney has an