Ohio Republican primary voters’ broad support for Donald Trump may have helped propel his preferred candidate, businessman Bernie Moreno, to victory in the state’s GOP Senate primary Tuesday, according to the results of CNN’s exit poll in the state.
The vast majority of Republican primary voters, more than 7 in 10, said it was at least somewhat important that the next senator in Ohio support the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. And that group broke heavily for the Trump-backed candidate, the exit poll found, with about 60% casting their vote for Moreno.
By contrast, among the minority of voters who called loyalty to Trump unimportant, nearly two-thirds backed state Sen. Matt Dolan – the only one of the three GOP candidates in the race who had not explicitly endorsed the former president. The third candidate, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, trailed his rivals among both groups of voters.
Tuesday’s primary was this year’s first direct test of Trump’s endorsement power in a contested Senate race. Moreno will next take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in a race that could shape the balance of power in the Senate. The three-term incumbent is one of two Senate Democrats running for reelection in a state that Trump twice carried.
Voters who said they decided their Senate vote in the final week of the campaign favored Dolan over Moreno by a modest margin, while Moreno won those who said they’d made up their minds earlier in 2024 or sometime last year. Trump backed Moreno in December and appeared at a rally with him over the weekend.
Ohio Republican primary voters’ embrace of Trump’s worldview goes beyond their support for the candidate he endorsed. Roughly 8 in 10 said they approved of Trump’s job performance when he was in the White House, with close to two-thirds…
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