Profoundly Polarized Electorates Call the Tune for Trump, Clinton (EXIT POLL)

— -- Profoundly polarized Democratic and Republican electorates called the tune on Super Tuesday, with demand for a plain-speaking outsider again lifting Donald Trump in the GOP race, while Democrats motivated by the opposite priority – political experience – boosted Hillary Clinton.

Combined results across the nine primaries held Tuesday night underscore the strength of each of these candidates’ support, even as neither ran the table. And – even beyond the fact that 79 percent of Republican voters were conservatives, while 60 percent of Democrats were liberals – the contrasts could not be starker.

In the Republican melee, Trump’s signature issues and attributes carried the day, with relatively little differentiation across population groups. The Democratic contest, by contrast, was to a great extent a demographic battle: Clinton and Sanders ran nearly evenly among whites, for instance, while she won blacks and Hispanics by 5-1 and 2-1 margins, respectively.

The GOP results also made clear the roots of Ted Cruz’s support – including strong conservatives, values voters and home- or neighboring-state fans – and left open the question of where Marco Rubio goes from here. Questions loom large for Sanders, too, since, overall, he lost mainline Democrats by a wide 41 percentage points.

Even with Trump’s victories, the results found a challenge for the GOP frontrunner: Among those who did not support him, three-quarters also said they’d be dissatisfied with him as the nominee, raising the issue of whether the party would come together under a Trump banner.

Here’s a summary of key results on each side, based on ABC News exit poll results analyzed for the network by Langer Research Associates.

The Republican Race

Setting aside the individual state results, 50 percent of GOP voters overall said they were looking for a candidate from outside the political establishment – and Trump won 64 percent of their votes, vs. 18 percent for Cruz and 7 percent for Rubio. As in previous contests, these outsider voters were critical for Trump, accounting for 84 percent of his supporters. He won a mere 8 percent of those focused, instead, on political experience.

Trump also continued to prevail among voters looking chiefly for a candidate who “tells it like it is” – winning 79 percent of their votes – or who “can bring needed change to Washington,” with 44 percent. These two groups combined to account for half the Republican electorate.

That’s fortunate for Trump, since he continued to perform dismally on the single most desired attribute, a candidate who “shares my values.” He won just 13 percent of the voters who picked it, vs. 42 percent for Cruz and 25 percent for Rubio. Rubio, for his part, easily won those focused on the most electable candidate – but it came last on the attributes list, marking his challenge finding traction with a broader base of GOP voters.

Two signature issues also indicate Trump’s advantages. His proposal to ban non-citizen Muslims from entering the country was supported by 69 percent of Republican voters, and Trump won 46 percent of their votes, 16 points ahead of Cruz. Fewer, but still 43 percent, favored deporting undocumented immigrants rather than offering them a path to legal status, and here Trump won 45 percent, 11 points ahead of Cruz. Rubio trailed in both cases.