http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7630286&nav=menu44_2DETROIT -- Mitt Romney capitalized on his Michigan ties Tuesday _ especially among voters who made up their minds in the past week _ while John McCain found far fewer Republican primary votes among the Democrats and independents who keyed his victory here eight years ago, an exit poll showed.
Romney also neutralized Mike Huckabee's strength among religious voters, running even with the Iowa caucuses champ among white evangelicals and beating him among all frequent churchgoers except those who attend services more than once a week, according to the survey for The Associated Press and television networks. McCain ran even with Romney among non-evangelicals while Huckabee lagged badly. snip
Although hardly contested, the Democratic primary apparently helped prevent crossover vote from aiding McCain as much as he would have liked in the Republican contest.
Michigan has open primaries and no registration by party, so voters choose on primary day which partisan contest to vote in. In 2000 with no Democratic race but for an eventual blowout in caucuses three weeks later, many Democrats voted in the Republican primary _ totaling 17 percent of that electorate, more than in any other GOP primary exit poll since at least 1992. Another 35 percent that year were independents, leaving Republicans in the minority in their own primary.
In contrast, on Tuesday two-thirds of GOP primary voters called themselves Republicans, a quarter were independents and fewer than one in 10 were Democrats. And McCain won smaller shares of independents and Democrats this time, with a larger field to split their vote than in 2000. He won two-thirds of independents in 2000 but little more than a third Tuesday, and he got only half as much of the shrunken Democratic vote as he did eight years ago, when he carried a whopping 82 percent of Democrats.
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