Santorum carries rural voters but falls short in Ohio; Romney has obstacles in rural, religious South

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania carried rural voters in key states in today's presidential contests, according to exit polls taken for national news organizations, but that does not appear to have been enough to give him the edge in the big prize of the night, Ohio.

Santorum easily carried Tennessee, but did as well if not better among the Volunteer State's suburban voters as he did among the rural ones, and he also carried its urban areas. The primary results appeared to resemble those in Oklahoma, where there was no exit poll was immediately available. Santorum won 37 and 34 percent of the vote in those states, respectively, and also carried North Dakota, which held caucuses.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts swept that state and adjoining Vermont, where two-thirds of the vote was rural. The Green Mountain State has no metropolitan areas, the exit poll's definition of "urban." Romney also won Virginia, where Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (who won his native Georgia) weren't on the ballot, and the Alaska and Idaho caucuses. (Composite table via CNN; click on image for larger version)

In Ohio, Romney appeared headed to a narrow victory, thanks to a small edge among the suburban voters who made up almost three-fifths of the vote, according to the exit poll. He won urban voters by a slightly smaller margin than Santorum won rural voters in the state.

"This should be Rick Santorum country," Alana Semuels of the Los Angeles Times wrote early from Troy, Ohio (Wikipedia map). "The conservative farmland of Ohio, one of 10 states to cast votes on Super Tuesday, is dotted with churches and Victorian homes with green John Boehner signs in the lawns," and on Saturday, Santorum "drew big crowds interested in his values-heavy message. But voters in this city, which sits in John Boehner's congressional district, seemed divided at the polls, between those who had decided, grudgingly, to accept Mitt Romney, and those who just couldn't do it." (Read more)

Today's voting will determine more Republican convention delegates than all the previous primaries and caucuses combined.

UPDATE, March 7: More than three-fourths of the voters in the Tennessee exit poll identified themselves as evangelical Christians, the highest share yet, The Washington Post reports. "In the rural religious South, Mitt Romney just doesn't connect," the L.A. Times reports. "They prefer him over Obama, conservative Republicans concede, but their wariness of his wealthy lifestyle reflects a national drag on his campaign." For the story by Michael Finnegan, click here.