Exit polls of this year’s Republican primaries show how Trump has reshaped the Republican Party

CNN —

With Super Tuesday in the rearview mirror, CNN’s entrance and exit polls of the Republican presidential contests so far highlight the extent to which the GOP electorate has been reshaped in former President Donald Trump’s image.

Across six states – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and California – most GOP primary voters said they’d consider Trump fit for the presidency even if he’s convicted of a crime. In none of those states has a majority of the GOP electorate been willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

Exit polls are a valuable tool to help understand primary voters’ demographic profile and political views. Like all surveys, however, exit polls are estimates, not precise measurements of the electorate. That’s particularly true for the preliminary set of exit poll numbers in Super Tuesday states, which haven’t yet been weighted to match the final results of the primaries. That means that the numbers may continue to update in those states. But the results in these six states – which are the only ones where entrance or exit polls were conducted this year – provide a glimpse of the type of voters turning out. Trump has dominated in all those states, which has put him on a glide path to his third-straight GOP nomination, as his last-remaining rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, has struggled to accumulate delegates.

The share of Republican primary voters and caucusgoers holding these views about Trump’s fitness for office and the 2020 election varies from state to state, even as the dominant sentiment remains largely the same. In California, North Carolina, South Carolina and Iowa, 60% or more said they’d view Trump