Obama posts marginal exit-poll edge among rural voters in winning Wisconsin presidential primary

Barack Obama probably carried the rural vote in winning Wisconsin's Democratic presidential primary tonight, according to the exit poll for the National Election Pool composed of television networks and other major media outlets.

Pollsters deemed 33 percent of their sample precincts to be rural, very close to the state's rural-population figure of 32 percent in the 2000 census. At those precincts, Obama got 53 percent of the poll respondents and Clinton got 45 percent. Applying the error margin of 4.51 percentage points for the sample of rural voters (472) to each candidate's figure, at the standard 95 percent confidence level (19 out of 20 cases), it's possible Clinton carried the rural vote, but not likely.

Among the 45 percent of voters that the pollsters considered suburban, Obama led 54 to 46. Among urban residents, he led 62-35. With 99 percent of the statewide vote counted, Obama led Clinton 58.7 percent to 41.2 percent, with 0.1 percent voting for "uninstructed" delegates.

By geographic area, Clinton won only in the largely rural northwestern part of the state, and by only 51-47, well within the much larger error margin for that sample (20 percent of the statewide total). Clinton also had marginal edges among other subsamples: 52-47 among white Democrats (the primary was open), 51-48 among the 12 percent of voters who said the race of the candidate was important, and 50-47 among the 35 percent who said national economic conditions are poor. Obama carried white voters overall, 52-46, just outside the error margin.