A new study suggests that evangelicals are the most likely religious group to justify torture. Around 60 percent of evangelicals said use of torture against suspected terrorists can often or sometimes be justified, compared to 50 percent of Catholics 46 percent of white mainline Protestants who said the same thing, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. David Neff takes a look at the survey over at CT's liveblog.
Meanwhile, the latest national survey suggest that overall support for legal abortion is down 8 percent from last August. Just 23 percent of white evangelical Protestants now favor legal abortion, down from 33 percent in August and mid-October and 28 percent in late October.
Also, a new Quinnipiac poll suggests that while Catholics support same-sex civil unions 68 -27percent, evangelicals oppose the unions 61-34 percent. Catholics support gay adoption 61-33 percent, while evangelical Christians oppose gay adoption 64-30 percent.
I received an e-mail from reader John Mills, who express his frustration with how evangelicals deal with torture:
Should we be standing against abortion & gay marriage? Certainly, but we should do the one and not neglect the other. This is an issue with terrible moral implications. If we can boycott Disney for it’s pro-gay agenda and deny communion to Joe Biden for being pro-abortion, why are our churches silent about torture? Why are we not denying entrance to our churches of Bush, Cheney, and the authors of these memos?
The real issue for the church is why are we not talking about this? Why have we not been talking about this? Were are the Christians that work for the CIA and the military that have refused to participate and resigned or been court-martialed rather than participate in a patently immoral activity?
If the church can’t hold a moral line on this issue, which is easy to be against, then we really have lost everything. The church is dead.
Do you agree with Mills?
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at May 1, 2009 | Comments (36)
Posting on Christianity Today's political blog, Tobin Grant of SIU-Carbondale pooh-poohs the idea that anything significant happened with the evangelical vote for president last November, even as he acknowledges that the exit polls showed a geographical split, with Southern evangelicals more likely to vote for McCain than their Midwestern co-religionists:
The news, however, is that despite the economy, the war, and at least some campaigning by Obama, evangelicals remained unmoved in their support for the Republican candidate.
No, the news from 2008 is the emergence of significant internal divisions within the evangelical vote, not only geographical but also generational. The geographical one (on display in Ted Olsen's cool interactive map) enabled Obama to carry Midwestern states (Ohio, Indiana) that had been beyond the reach of Democratic presidential candidates for a long time. The generational division was portentous, because it showed that among evangelicals, the young went from being the most enthusiastic Bush voters to the least enthusiastic McCain voters, while the old went in the opposite direction.
Here's what I wrote about that a couple of months ago:
Laurie Goodstein of the NYT was kind enough to make available some number-crunching of the exit poll numbers on white evangelicals that the pollsters, Edison/Mitofsky, did for her; and it's pretty interesting stuff. The margin among 18-29 year-olds went from 83-16 for Bush in 2004 to 66-32 for McCain in 2008. Among 30-44 year-olds, the shrinkage was from 86-12 to 76-23. Among the 45-64 year-olds, there was essentially no change: 76-23 to 76-22. And among those 65 and older, the GOP margin grew, from 68-32 for Bush to 72-26. So we're talking about swings toward Obama of 33 and 20 points in the younger cohorts, and towards McCain of 1 and 10 points in the older cohorts.
The point, obviously, is that young evangelicals are the future of the voting bloc, and if they hew to their 2008 preferences, the solid 3-1 GOP majorities that evangelicals have turned in for the past few elections is in jeopardy. As with the Catholic vote, aggregate numbers can conceal more than they reveal.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at February 23, 2009 | Comments (1)
Gallup just released data comparing importance of religion in Americans' lives.
Overall, 65 percent of Americans say religion is an important part of their daily lives. The number is lower than what the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found in their Religious Landscape survey released in February 2008. In that survey, 82 percent of Americans said religious belief and practices was very important or somewhat important, while only 65 percent of Gallup respondents said religion is an important part of their daily life. The Pew Forum gave an option for "very important" or "somewhat important" "not too important/not important at all" while Gallup gave respondents yes, no, don't know options.
So how does your state rank?
Top 10 most religious states
1. Mississippi
2. Alabama
3. South Carolina
4. Tennessee
5. Louisiana
6. Arkansas
7. Georgia
8. North Carolina
9. Oklahoma
10. Kentucky
(Texas comes in at 11)
Top 11 least religious states
1. Vermont
2. New Hampshire
3. Maine
4. Massachusetts
5. Alaska
6. Washington
7. Oregon
8. Rhode Island
9. Nevada
10. Connecticut
The results were based on telephone interviews with 355,334 adults.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at January 28, 2009 | Comments (3)
Slate's media watchdog Jack Shafer thinks he's got the NYT dead to rights for Paul Vitello's December 14 story on how the recession is boosting worship attendance, at evangelical churches in particular. Not so, clucks Shafer, citing Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport's marshalling of evidence that there has, in fact, been no increase in church attendance in these hard times. Weekly attendance, saith Newport, has remained around 42 percent for months and months.
Unbeknownst to Shafer, however, is the bogosity of Gallup's church attendance numbers. What Newport doesn't say is that his company's surveys have shown church attendance to be in that exact numeric neighborhood ever since they began asking the question 60 years ago. As sure as death and taxes, two in five Americans will say they attend church weekly.
But for over a decade, sociologists of religion (and those who read them) have known that 1) a lot of those supposed weekly attenders are fibbing; and 2) more of them are fibbing now than used to. The evidence for this comes from multiple sources, including time-usage studies, on-the-ground observation of parking lots, church attendance records, interviews with clergy. These days, the real number for weekly attendance is in the low 20 percent range. (Here's a citation for one of the more important articles on the subject: C. Kirk Hadaway, Penny Long Marler and Mark Chaves, "Overreporting Church Attendance in America: Evidence That Demands the Same Verdict," American Sociological Review, Vol. 63, No. 1 [Feb., 1998], pp. 122-130.)
So does this meant that Vitello's article is on the money? Could be. A bunch of phone calls to pastors is more likely to turn up something new in the going-to-church department than Gallup's invariant two-in-five. Don't expect the phenomenon to last, though. After 9/11, a host of stories tracked a bump in churchgoing, and then a host tracked the quick reversion to the norm. As Yoda might have said, "Backsliding always we are."
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at December 23, 2008 | Comments (0)
The religious makeup of the incoming 111th Congress roughly matches the overall American religious landscape, with overrepresentation among Jews and Mormons, according to new analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Just over half (55 percent) of House and Senate members who will take office on Jan. 6 are Protestants, compared to 51 percent of the U.S. population. The second-largest group, Catholics, make up 30 percent of lawmakers, compared to 24 percent of all Americans.
Among Protestants, Baptists lead in the House and Senate, at 12 percent, followed by Methodists (11 percent), Presbyterians (8 percent), Episcopalians (7 percent) and Lutherans (4.5 percent).
Like the nation as a whole, the proportion of mainline Protestant members in Congress has fallen in recent decades. Methodists, for example, made up nearly one in five lawmakers in 1961. Episcopalians and Presbyterians have seen similar drops, while Lutherans have remained
relatively steady.
Catholics, meanwhile, have grown from 19 percent in 1961 -- the same year John F. Kennedy took office as the nation's first Catholic president -- to 30 percent today. Catholics make up a larger share of the Senate (37 percent) than the House (21 percent).
Jews make up 8.3 percent of the new Congress, compared to just 1.7 percent of the general population. Mormons, too, account for 2.6 percent of Congress but 1.7 percent of the general population.
The 111th Congress will see the return of two Muslims (Democrats Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Andre Carson of Indiana) and two Buddhists (Democrats Hank Johnson of Georgia and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii) who were all elected to the House during the 110th Congress.
The Pew analysis said no Hindu has ever been elected to Congress, although a Sikh, Rep. Dalip Singh Saund, represented California for three terms beginning in 1957. Only one member of Congress, Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., is a professing nonbeliever; five members did not specify a religious affiliation in data collected by Congressional Quarterly.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at December 22, 2008 | Comments (1)
A new poll suggests that religion and economic status played a driving force than race and age in determining whether voters would approve a ban on same-sex marriage in California, Lisa Leff reports for the Associated Press.
The ban drew its strongest support from both evangelical Christians and voters who didn't attend college, according to results released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California.
Age and race, meanwhile, were not as strong factors as assumed. According to the poll, 56 percent of voters over age 55 and 57 percent of nonwhite voters cast a yes ballot for the gay marriage ban.
People who identified themselves as practicing Christians were highly likely to support the constitutional amendment, with 85 percent of evangelical Christians, 66 percent of Protestants and 60 percent of Roman Catholics favoring it.
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life provides a graph of how Americans' opposition to same-sex marriage has varied over the years. A 2007 survey showed that 55 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage while 36 percent were in favor of it. Evangelicals in California (85 percent) voted for the ban slightly higher than the percent of evangelicals overall who oppose gay marriage (81 percent).
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at December 4, 2008 | Comments (18)
Steve Waldman poses a question that has been gnawing at those of us who spend way too much of our time poring over exit polls by religious category; namely: Why didn't any more white mainline Protestants vote for Barack Obama? Like Steve, I expected Obama to make real inroads among his co-religionists, a onetime heartland Republican constituency that had been trending Democratic in recent elections. In the event, they voted (according to Pew's account), 55-44 for McCain (as opposed to 56-44 for George Bush in 2004.) Meanwhile, Obama reduced the Republican margin among white evangelicals, whom he wasn't supposed to be making headway with, by a full 11 points. What gives? Here's the best I can manage by way of an answer, based on currently available data.
Mainliners were the only Judeo-Christian grouping whose vote for Bush decreased from 2000 to 2004. And that decline occurred solely among those who attended worship frequently (once a week or more), to the tune of 8 percentage points. Bush actually picked up one percentage point among the less frequent attenders. (These data, worked up by John Green for an article in Religion in the News, can be found here.) We don't yet have the crosstabs for religious traditions by frequency of attendance in 2008, but we do know that among white Protestants, the evangelical portion of the vote increased (by three points), while mainliners dropped by a point. And in the overall attendance categories, there was a drop in turnout only among the more-than-weekly attenders. I'm guessing that the part of the mainline community that had not been in motion--the less frequent attenders--remained in place as it had in 2004, while among those who had been in motion--the frequent attenders--all that changed was that a small number decided not to vote for president this time around.
OK, but so what? My hypothesis is that 1) lukewarm mainliners have for the past decade been frozen into their partisan commitments in a way that may have more to do with where they live and what particular denomination they belong to than with their identity as generic mainline Protestants; and 2) worshipful mainliners reached a new partisan equilibrium in 2004, such that in 2008 just a few were sufficiently torn between conflicting impulses (economic conservatism, anti-Palinism, whatever) that they crossed their arms and stayed at home. Bottom line: White mainliners are now kind of like white Catholics--modestly more Republican than Democratic but less likely to shift around.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at December 2, 2008 | Comments (4)
About two months ago I sagely predicted that mainline Protestants would flood to Obama and white evangelicals (thanks to Obama's positions on abortion, Sarah Palin and other factors) wouldn't go anywhere near him.
It looks like I got it pretty much exactly backward. I've written elsewhere why I think evangelicals did move to Obama in meaningful numbers, but I'm absolutely stumped by this: according to an analysis by the Pew Religion Forum, non-evangelical Protestants didn't move to Obama at all. Kerry got 44%. So did Obama.
Given that just about every other religious group shifted to the Democrat, I'm scratching my head as to why these folks didn't.
(Originally posted at Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at December 2, 2008 | Comments (6)
We numbers junkies thank Laurie Goodstein at the New York Times for doing a special slice-and-dice on the exit polls that gives us this fascinating nugget:
Obama doubled his support among evangelicals (Obamagelicals, as we like to call them) ages 18-29 (getting 32% compared to 16% in 2004).
What the Times didn't mention is that Obama actually went down among evangelicals 65 and older (Kerry got 32% of them; Obama got 26%)
In other words, in 2004 the senior evangelicals were more Democratic than the juniors. Now it's the other way around.
(Originally posted at Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 7, 2008 | Comments (7)
If anybody never sleeps, it's John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Green has been giving a series of conference calls with reporters on religion and the election results.
While there was a large surge in the minority Christian vote, early exit polls do not show much change in the white evangelical turnout. Several people, including Green, have been pointing to a broader agenda in the evangelical community, so I asked him why the results were similar to 2004. Here's part of what he said late last night.
"I think there's a lot of evidence that among certain elements of the community and many evangelical leaders there is this press to broaden the agenda. The initial numbers suggest that however important that maybe it didn't connect to the vote for many evangelicals.
"Now, there are at least two explanations that we'll have to sort out. One was that there was a lot of interest in the broader agenda but there was counter pressure on the social issues. Another possibility is that many of the elements of the new agenda the environment, international human rights, poverty, and so forth just didn't figure into presidential voting choices in this election.
"They may in the future, or they may be important when it comes to considering legislation that the new president may propose. I don't think we can take these numbers to say now the broadening of the agenda didn't happen, but it does suggest that whatever was going on it wasn't wired up to the vote in the way many evangelical leaders had hoped."
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 5, 2008 | Comments (3)
As readers of this blog know, I've been pushing the hypothesis that evangelicals in the Midwest were going to be shifting to Obama in ways that their co-religionists in other parts of the country, especially the South, were not. And lo and behold, yesterday's vote more or less bears that out. Across the Midwest, where evangelicals tended to vote 3-1 for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004, they tended to vote only 2-1 for John McCain over Barack Obama yesterday. Meanwhile, in the South and what we call the Southern Crossroads, whereas in 2004 evangelicals voted 3-1 or better for Bush over Kerry, in most states they actually voted by greater margins for McCain over Obama.
Let's compare Indiana and Oklahoma. Hoosier evangelicals favored Bush by 77-22 but McCain by only 66-41. Oklahomans, by contrast, voted 77-23 for Bush and 77-22 for McCain. Midwest pickups for Obama included 11 points in Ohio, 13 in Michigan, 11 in Iowa, 11 in South Dakota, and 19 in Nebraska. But he lost one point in Alabama, five in Mississippi, three in Kentucky, five in Tennessee, eight in Louisiana, and five in Arkansas. There were some exceptions. In Missouri, which we include in the Southern Crossroads (but which has real Midwestern features), there was a 14-point shift to Obama. And in Kansas, which we include in the Midwest (but which has real Southern Crossroads features), there was a 2-point shift to McCain. Meanwhile, out West, there were significant shifts by evangelicals toward Obama in Oregon (15), Colorado (20), and Idaho (12). In the latter two states, however, the shift didn't even manage to bring the vote down to 3-1 levels.)
I haven't tried to do all the calculations, but one thing is clear. In Indiana's astonishing flip to blue, fully half the 21-point shift came from the evangelicals. The larger question has to do with explaining the overall bifurcation. The most likely explanation for what happened in the South and Southern Crossroads is the persistence of racial prejudice in those regions. It's also the case that this is where evangelicals are most heavily organized and mobilized as Republican partisans. But in the Midwest, there is Obama's identity as a Midwesterner, and the common Midwestern religious sensibility that he appealed to, to take into account. Not to belabor the point, but Obama's communitarian outlook is very much the Midwestern way--a point Andrew Walsh and I make in our new book, One Nation, Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. The book postulates that, led by the likes of Obama, we may be now be trading the Crossroads ethos of Bush and Company for a Midwestern one. As the book's last line reads: "If there is to be a new style of religious pluralism in America, there is something to be said for having it emerge from the Midwest."
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 5, 2008 | Comments (3)
It will be widely noted that the God Gap, as measured by the partisan preference of frequent (weekly or more often) worship attenders, shrank from 20 points in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections to 12 points this time around. And some may be inclined to credit this year's focus on religious outreach by Obama and the DNC for what happened. But in fact, the shift occurred in the 2006 midterm elections. Then, what had been a 20-point preference by frequent attenders for GOP congressional candidates in 2000 and 2004 shrank to 13 points. Meanwhile, the gap among less frequent attenders bumped up from 13 points for Democratic candidates in 2004 to 25 points in 2006--the same territory as the 23 percent of less frequent attenders who went for Obama. Measured in terms of comparing frequent and less frequent attenders, then, the God Gap remains as big as ever, just with both the former and the latter both more Democratically inclined than they were in 2000-2004.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics.)
Posted by Ted Olsen at November 5, 2008 | Comments (5)
Conrad Hackett, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, has a helpful if wonkish (and expensive) article in the last Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion on measuring evangelicals.
Michael Lindsay, he of Faith in the Halls of Power, cowrote the article and has an executive summary on his website.
But today on The Immanent Frame blog, Hackett summarizes the article with an eye to tonight's exit poll data:
The question used to identify evangelicals in today's exit polls is "Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian?" Unfortunately, this is not a great survey question.
One problem with this measure is that it produces estimates of the evangelical population considerably larger and different from estimates based on measures more commonly used by scholars. The measure originates with the Gallup Organization, which has been using it since 1986 to track the size of America's evangelical population. It was introduced into presidential election exit polls in 2004.
Despite Gallup's reputation, the measure has several flaws. It is a double-barreled question that implies that "born-again" and "evangelical" are interchangeable labels, which may not be true for all respondents. It does not offer respondents alternate ways of expressing religious identity, which no doubt inflates estimates of the evangelical population. In this respect, a better question would be "Would you describe yourself as an evangelical Christian, another type of Christian, or a non-Christian?"
More helpful analysis follows, including a nod to the problem of asking only white Protestants whether they're evangelicals or born-again Christians.
Posted by Ted Olsen at November 5, 2008 | Comments (0)
One thing that puzzles me about these numbers: Obama's progress among Catholics is with those who don't attend mass weekly. But among Protestants, he improved among those who do attend weekly.
One possible theory: abortion. Mass-attending Catholics are more likely to care about abortion than those who go less regularly. Protestant weekly attenders, on the other hand, include Mainline Protestants that are not necessarily pro-life.
But that's just a theory. Based on very preliminary exit polls.
(Originally posted at Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
Barack Obama had made a major effort to win white evangelicals. For several months, it looked as if his efforts were for naught.
But the early exit polls show that Obama did make some progress. Bush beat Kerry 78%-21% in 2004. So far, McCain's beating Obama 72%-26%
(Originally posted at Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (1)
For several elections, Republicans have dominated among the most religious and Democrats among the secular.
Based on the first wave of exit polls, Obama has narrowed the God Gap considerably, dramatically improving on John Kerry's 2004 performance among those who attend church frequently.
Bush beat Kerry among weekly church-goers by 61%-39%. McCain is beating Obama 54%-44%
Another key group is the Sorta Religious. Those who attend a few times a month or a few times a year. Among those who attend a few times a month, went for Bush 50%-49%. Obama is winning this group, 52%-47%, according to the first wave of exit polls.
(Originally posted at Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
CT Politics Blog reader Christine Tatum sends us these photos from outside of Denver.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
CT Politics Blog reader Debbye Harmon tells us her story from Palisade, Colorado, which she describes as a small, mostly conservative town.
Faith in God, pride in America, and taking care of family is the core of this community. Our voting takes place, very appropriately, in the Veteran's Memorial Park.
I saw working adults taking time from their work day to vote. I saw an elderly man wheeling himself into the building in his wheelchair, wanting to cast his vote. I saw an elderly woman walking slowly but determinedly with her oxygen tank to cast her vote. I saw young adults working with older adults in their volunteer roles of overseeing the election.
All were polite. The atmosphere was friendly, but not jocular. There was a seriousness to the matter at hand, and respect for one another and for a most important decision we were all making together. I was proud to be there amongst such good people, and proud to be an American. Perhaps that sounds a bit sappy, but I make no apology.
Whatever the outcome of this election, may God bless America and each of you who read this.
Send more photos and stories to christianitytodaymag@gmail.com.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
CT Politics Blog reader Khari Johnson took this picture at a polling location at Cajon Valley Middle School in El Cajon, California.
Send more photos and stories to christianitytodaymag@gmail.com.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (1)
The Associated Press says, "One in four voters were white born-again evangelical Christians."
It's unclear if how much the news service is rounding. In 2004 evangelicals were 24 percent of the vote. (In 2000, exit polls asked voters whether they were part of the religious right, not whether they were evangelicals. 14 percent said yes.)
So regardless of the turnout story, it looks like evangelicals came out in about the same percentage as they did four years ago.
Posted by Ted Olsen at November 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
CNN just announced that according to its exit polls today, McCain beat Obama among evangelicals by a margin of 72%-26%.
McCain did best with evangelicals in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina, and worst (or least well) in Minnesota and Iowa. He had a majority of the evangelical vote in all states.
More to come. A lot more to come. (So far, CNN's website doesn't include its exit poll data on evangelicals. If you ask me, on the TV side of CNN's operations, the tech toys are getting in the way of presenting information helpfully. They're like the kids on Christmas who are more interested in the box the toy came in.)
Posted by Ted Olsen at November 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
Gawker and other sites are leaking early exit poll data. Here's a bit so far:
In Indiana, 42% of voters are white evangelicals, up from 35% in 2004. McCain is getting 68% of their support. Bush captured 77% of the vote in 2004.
In Missouri, white evangelicals are 38% of the vote in and they are backing McCain by 67% to 32%. Not as strong a showing as Bush in 2004.
Posted by Ted Olsen at November 4, 2008 | Comments (3)
Since January, Christianity Today has asked its online readers to tell us who you support.
Both candidates went through a little roller coaster, so while they are interesting, the polls are unscientific.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (1)
CT Politics Blog reader Kelley Mathews took these photos outside city hall in Anna, Texas, a town of 9,000. Here's her story:
It took me about 30 minutes to get through the line and complete the easy, computerized voting machine. The small crowd was very friendly, which is typical around here, and you could feel the buzz. No bantering between political parties - just excitement about the big day.
The second photo is of Kelley's three-year-old daughter, Maggie. Send more photos and stories to christianitytodaymag@gmail.com.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
Here are a few last findings from Harris and Pew, the former having to do with registered voters and the latter with likely ones. The polls are pretty close overall, Obama 53-44 (Harris) and 52-46 (Pew). White Catholics diverge radically: McCain 57-40 (Harris), Obama 47-45 (Pew). Harris has white evangelicals surprisingly close (for them): McCain 61-34; Pew has them at a more expected 68-23. Harris has Jews backing Obama 76-24 (nothing from Pew).
If there's anything really noteworthy here as we wrap up our pre-election poll-reading, it's what Harris reports on Mormons, who tend to come in for precious little attention, given their staunch Republicanism and demographic concentration in states (Idaho, Utah) where it would take a partisan sea change to make a difference in a presidential election. Anyway, Harris finds Mormons backing McCain 60-37. That seems like a pretty healthy plurality until you realize that 81 percent of Mormons voted for George W. Bush.
What's up with that? Well, at a session on Mitt Romney's presidential campaign at the American Academy of Religion, it emerged from Mormon attendees that there was a good deal of unhappiness among Mormons with the Republican Party and how Romney was treated by its evangelical base. The anecdotal evidence cited suggests that not a few Mormons have decided not to vote for the GOP nominee, and may even pull the Democratic lever.
Could such a decision make a difference? Well, both Nevada and Arizona are pretty close, and Mormons constitute six and five percent of their populations respectively. A shift of 40 points among Mormons would equal 2-3 percent of the vote in those states--which could well turn out to be the difference.
(Originally posted at Mark Silk's Spiritual Politics.)
Posted by Ted Olsen at November 4, 2008 | Comments (4)
CT Politics Blog reader Alison Bowen took these photos outside polls in New York City. Send more photos and stories to christianitytodaymag@gmail.com.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
Pre-election polls come and go, and obsessed as we are with them, they matter little when all is said and done. But exit polls are something else entirely, both for historians and political scientists assessing the significance of elections and for politicians and their minions planning for the future. Think, in recent years, of the amount of attention given the God Gap or the 2004 "Moral Values" vote. So as the polls close tonight, the exit polls will be on display for instant analysis; I expect to be doing a bit of it myself. I am, however, more aware than ever of the caveats. Here are three.
1. Exit polls in the absence of actual vote totals reflect guesswork on what particular precincts are worth in terms of the total vote. When the totals are in, the exit polls are then adjusted to reflect the actual vote. In an election like the present one, where there are major imponderables (the turnout among younger voters and African Americans foremost among them), the guesswork is more than usually difficult. So initial indications of the voting patterns of various groups, including religious ones, will need to be taken with a major grain of salt.
2. Exit poll calculations this year are further complicated by the large number of voters--perhaps one-third of the total--who have cast their votes early. The pollsters are doing surveying of these voters, but integrating a survey of voters who say they've voted into an exit poll is not an easy thing.
3. Our new American Religious Identification Survey raises problems with assessing the evangelical vote. It turns out that nearly 40 percent of Mainline Protestants (identified by denomination) and 15 percent of Catholics answer yes to the standard exit poll/survey approach to identifying evangelicals: "Do you consider yourself an evangelical or born-again Christian?" Nationwide, that's maybe one-third of the voters who answer yes, but we don't know yet how these "evangelicals" are distributed regionally or state-by-state. There are many things to weigh here but one is: In places the Midwest, where there's a large proportion of mainliners, it may be that indications of a greater tendency of "evangelicals" to prefer Obama just reflect a mainline propensity.
Bottom line: Any immediate conclusions drawn from the exit polls have to be considered highly provisional. It's going to take a while to get this sorted out.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (1)
Voting today? Lifehacker has a nice post showing where you can get the freebies. Hold on to your "I voted" sticker.
* Ben & Jerry's: Free scoop of ice cream between 5-8 p.m.
* Books-A-Million: Free cup of coffee.
* California Tortilla: Free taco.
* Chick-fil-A: "Several hundred" Chick-fil-A restaurants are handing out chicken sandwiches.
* Krispy Kreme: Free star-shaped doughnut.
* Shane's Rib Shack: 3-piece chicken tenders, fries, and 20-ounce drink to the first 300 customers at participating locations.
* Starbucks: Free tall coffee at any Starbucks.
* Vote & Vax: National project by non-profits to offer free flu vaccinations on election day.
(Note, not all chain stores may participate.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
Eighty-five percent of evangelicals under 39 plan to vote for McCain compared to the 13 percent who plan to vote for Barack Obama, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Overall, the poll suggests that 77 percent of all evangelicals will break for McCain while 21 percent will vote for Obama. McCain's support is higher than the breakdown in a recent Pew Center survey (65-22).
The breakdown for younger evangelicals also does not match up with earlier polls sponsored by Faith in Public Life and Religion & News Ethics Weekly.
In the Faith in Public Life survey conducted August 28 to September 19, 65 percent of young evangelicals (under 34) supported McCain while 29 percent were for Obama. In Religion & News Ethics Weekly's survey conducted September 4 to 21, 62 percent of young evangelicals (under 30) planned to vote for McCain, while 30 percent broke for Obama.
Julia Duin of The Washington Times suggests that abortion is the key issue keeping evangelicals - including young evangelicals - from voting for Obama. A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll found that 70 percent of evangelicals say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases.
"While young evangelicals - and the public - have become more liberal on other social issues like gay marriage," Pollster Anna Greenberg said, "we do not see the same movement towards a liberal position on abortion."
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 1, 2008 | Comments (34)
A little over half (53 percent) of Protestant pastors plan to vote for John McCain compared with 20 percent who plan to vote for Barack Obama, a new poll suggests. A full 22 percent were undecided in the LifeWay Research poll conducted October 10-28.
Sixty-six percent of self-identified evangelical pastors plan to vote for McCain while 13 percent are for Obama and 19 percent are undecided. A recent Pew Center survey suggested that 67 percent of evangelicals plan to vote for McCain while 24 are for Obama.
Among mainline pastors, 36 percent plan to vote for McCain, 37 percent support Obama, and 24 percent are undecided.
Fifty-three percent of Protestant pastors said that they have personally endorsed candidates for public office this year, but outside of their church roles. Less than 3 percent said that they have endorsed candidates during a church service this year.
This is what surprised Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, a polling organization associated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
1. Self identified "mainline" pastors not more pro-Obama (they were split).
2. A sizeable minority of pastors are still undecided.
3. A majority [of] pastors endorsed candidates outside of their church role.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 30, 2008 | Comments (26)
A new poll shows that fewer Hoosier evangelicals plan to vote for John McCain than in other swing states.
Indiana: 57 (McCain) 33 (Obama) percent
Florida: 72-21
Ohio: 61-33
Pennsylvania: 62-31
Update: Mark Silk has a helpful explanation of why Hoosier evangelicals are significant (besides the fact that Indiana is my home state).
In this usually dependable red state, it is not good news for McCain that evangelicals are supporting him by less than 2-1 (57-33). In 2004, they backed Bush 77-22. Bush won Indiana by 21 points, 60-39. Evangelicals constitute 35 percent of the Hoosier vote, so their 31-point shift toward Obama represents about half the total shift in the partisan breakdown from 2004 to now. In other words, evangelicals in Indiana seem to be shifting disproportionately toward Obama. For a core (as opposed to a swing) constituency, that's big news indeed.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 29, 2008 | Comments (9)
Barack Obama may seem like the perfect candidate for the Religious Left.
He's outspoken about his faith, he has a staff devoted to religious outreach, and he talks about finding common ground on divisive issues like abortion. Still, recent polls show he hasn't pulled many votes away from John McCain.
David R. Swartz, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame, writes about the Religious Left's influence among evangelicals in CT's sister publication Books & Culture.
"Evangelicals' engagement of diverse politics - including New Left, progressive New Deal, and right-wing politics, all since the early 1970s - suggests the volatility of evangelical politics and its susceptibility to co-optation, sudden shifts, and identity politics. The politicization of evangelicalism has exposed the limits of evangelical politics."
Swartz says Amy Sullivan and Jim Wallis may have the best case for a "sea change" now than at any other time since 1973.
"But given the persisting limits of evangelical politics on the Left in the past three decades, Wallis and Sullivan's hopes for a large, robust progressive movement may well be dashed again."
Also, if you're thinking about plopping down the bucks to see W., Brett McCracken wrote a commentary over at Christianity Today Movies on whether political movies matter in the election season. Read the whole thing, but here's his conclusion:
"Perhaps film isn't the best method of political propaganda; there just isn't enough evidence to back it up. But don't expect Hollywood to stop producing election-themed fare any time soon. As we've seen from Saturday Night Live this season, enjoying 50 percent higher ratings than this time last year, politics is good for entertainment. But is entertainment good for politics? Does it make a difference? The verdict is still out."
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 29, 2008 | Comments (0)
John McCain is behind Barack Obama 36 percent to 52 percent in the Pew Center's latest survey, and his support from evangelicals has been slowly draining.
In the last three weeks, support for McCain has slipped from 74 percent, 67 percent, to 65 percent. However, support for Barack Obama has stayed relatively the same at 18 percent, 22 percent, and 22 percent.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 28, 2008 | Comments (28)
Despite Barack Obama's heavy outreach to religious voters, more evangelicals report hearing from John McCain's campaign, a new poll suggests.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll report shows that 26 percent of evangelicals have been contacted by McCain's campaign, compared with 15 percent who have heard from the Obama campaign.
The Obama campaign seems to take a more public approach with their faith tours, while perhaps the McCain campaign is taking a quieter approach.
The 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign urged people to obtain church directories, but last year, McCain's campaign denied the same approach. Obama's head of religious outreach Joshua DuBois told Michael Paulson of The Boston Globe that the campaign would not "steal" church directories to call people. Eric Gorski of the Associated Press wrote last month that a McCain campaign spokesman declined to say whether parish directories were in the campaign's plans.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 24, 2008 | Comments (5)
Barna just released a poll that shows only 45 percent of "born again" voters plan for vote for John McCain while 43 percent plan to cast a vote for Barack Obama. Sixty-three percent of evangelicals plan to vote for McCain while 23 percent plan to vote for Obama.
Earlier this week, a Pew Center survey found that 67 percent of evangelicals for McCain while 24 plan to vote for Obama. Why the difference? The centers poll differently (the Pew Center looks at white evangelicals while the Barna poll includes African Americans), but the numbers are interesting.
Mark Silk points to recent regional Quinnipiac polls for McCain's lead among evangelicals: Florida (71-23), Ohio (59-32), and Pennsylvania (63-32).
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 23, 2008 | Comments (16)
President Bush won the majority of Hispanic Protestants in 2004, but a new survey shows that Hispanic Protestants are moving away from the Republican Party.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 17, 2008 | Comments (15)
With all the attention showered on evangelical Christians and Catholics, we've neglected the religious group partly driving Barack Obama's recent surge in the polls: mainline Protestants.
This bucket includes the historic American churches that once dominated the spiritual landscape but have been losing members in recent years: United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church in the USA, American Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ. Their members represent 18% of the population.
This used to be a solidly Republican group. In 2004, they went for President George W. Bush 54%-46%. This summer, John McCain was leading Sen. Obama among these voters 43% to 40%, according to a study by John Green of the University of Akron.
But an ABCNews/Washington Post poll released Monday showed Sen. Obama now leading among Mainliners 53%-44%, indicating that the undecided voters are breaking heavily for the Democratic candidate.
Why? The superficial answer is, as with so many other questions, the economy. In Beliefnet's Twelve Tribes study, 68% of centrist Mainliners (what we called "White Bread Protestants") said the economy was the No. 1 issue compared with just 4% who said social issues.
Growing More Conservative
But that only gets at part of the riddle.
For one thing, Mainliners are traditionally conservative on economics - and surveys indicate that if anything they've become more skeptical of big government since 2004. Slightly more than four in 10 "white bread Protestants" call themselves conservative compared with 16% who say they're liberal. In some ways, Sen. McCain is actually an ideal candidate to appeal to this group - a mainline Christian himself (raised Episcopalian), he talks about fiscal discipline and earmarks.
The Mainline shift to Sen. Obama may be partly an unintended consequence of Sen. McCain's efforts to energize evangelical Christians, including through the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Though fiscally conservative, mainline Protestants are socially liberal - so they would be unimpressed by the Republican Party adopting the most antiabortion platform ever. Mainliners may be irritated or scared by Gov. Palin's religious language and beliefs - including her attendance at a Pentecostal church espousing "End Times" theology (that we're approaching the end of the world and Christ's return).
In general, Mainliners have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the role the "religious right" has played in the Republican Party. According to a new survey by a progressive group called Faith in Public Life, Mainliners - by a margin of two to one -- believe public officials are too close to religious leaders. Evangelicals, by a two to one margin, think politicians should pay more attention to religion.
If you view the campaign as a chess game, Sen. McCain made a bold and successful gambit to shore up evangelicals by picking Gov. Palin - but thereby left several other pieces on the board vulnerable.
Targeting Mainliners, Moderate Evangelicals
Sen. Obama has skillfully capitalized on this. The campaign's religious outreach arm has initiated 950 "American values" house parties, about 65% of which have been among mainline Protestants. His campaign recently sent out a massive faith mailing targeted at mainline Protestants and moderate evangelicals.
The electoral map makers have insured that these groups get special attention. A list of states with higher-than-average concentrations of Mainliners is also a list of the key electoral battlegrounds: Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
There's the simple fact that Sen. Obama himself is a Midwestern mainline Protestant. Though thought of as a "black liberation" enclave, Sen. Obama's church in Chicago was part of the United Church of Christ, a mostly white mainline denomination - and Sen. Obama's faith rhetoric is more traditional Protestant than Black liberationist.
Sen. Obama's frequent discussion of his personal faith seemed targeted at evangelicals but may have given comfort instead to traditional Mainliners. "Obama planting seeds in the evangelical garden has borne fruit in the mainline garden," says Mara Vanderslice, founder of a progressive religious group Matthew25 and religious outreach director for John Kerry's 2004 campaign.
All in all, the economy is still the driving force in the mainline shift. But these other noneconomic factors help explain why the campaign has seen -- as of now -- more improvement with mainline Protestants than with other groups.
Reprinted from Steven Waldman's Political Perceptions column at WSJ.com (Originally posted at Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 15, 2008 | Comments (10)
John McCain's support from evangelicals fell 12 percent from last week, a new
The CBS News/New York Times poll shows.
McCain still leads Obama 63 to 27 percent among evangelicals, but Obama gained seven percentage points from last week. A September 25 CBS poll showed McCain leading 69 to 20 percent.
Overall, the poll shows Obama with a 14-point lead over McCain: 53 percent to 39 percent.
ABC News polling director Gary Langer wrote yesterday that no presidential candidate has come back from an October 10-point deficit in pre-election polls since 1936.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 14, 2008 | Comments (9)
Quinnipiac's latest on CO, MI, MN, and WI disclose a few salient points on religious voting blocs.
1. In Michigan, where all Catholics barely split for Kerry 50-49, white Catholics are now backing Obama 55-37. Meanwhile, white evangelicals have gone from supporting Bush 2004 76-24, to preferring McCain 58-32. No wonder McCain kissed the state goodbye.
2. White evangelicals in Dobsonland are hard core. In Colorado they went 74-26 for Bush in 2004. Now they back McCain 78-18.
3. White evangelicals in MN and WI go for McCain 65-29 and 57-38 respectively. All told, Midwestern evangelicals do seem to be softening up for the GOP.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 14, 2008 | Comments (3)
I've been looking at the crosstabs (premium access, I'm afraid) for yesterday's Rasmussen polls of five battleground states won by Bush in 2004 (VA, FL, OH, MO, and NC), and the news about religious blocs is this. Catholics in the South have shifted significantly toward Obama, most importantly in Florida, where Obama has turned what was a three-point deficit for Kerry into a 15-point advantage. And white evangelicals in Ohio, who backed Bush in 2004 by 75-25, now prefer McCain by only 65-33. If they had voted that way four years ago, Kerry would have carried Ohio by over 100,000 votes and been president for the past four years. Likewise with the Catholics in Florida, by a few hundred thousand votes.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 14, 2008 | Comments (5)
Iowans definitely seem to be in Barack Obama's camp--by 54-41, according to the latest SUSA poll. On abortion, Iowans split 53 percent pro-choice versus 45 percent pro-life. But whereas one-third of the pro-lifers prefer Obama, less than one-quarter of pro-choicers prefer McCain.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 13, 2008 | Comments (26)
Most young evangelicals will not vote for Barack Obama with their peers and will not support John McCain as strongly as their parents next month, a survey released this morning suggests.
Most young adults overwhelmingly support Obama (59 percent) while 35 percent plan to vote for McCain. On the other hand, 29 percent of young evangelicals plan to vote for Obama and 65 percent support McCain. Nearly 70 percent of older evangelicals plan to vote for McCain while 25 percent plan to vote for Obama.
Faith in Public Life released a new survey today called "The Young and the Faithful" conducted by Public Religion Research from August 28 to September 19.
The generation gap in this survey is closer than the results found in the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly survey, which found that older evangelicals support McCain nine more percentage points than younger evangelicals.
The survey also found an interesting comparison between what issues evangelicals find important in the 2008 election and what evangelicals are hearing about in church.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 8, 2008 | Comments (16)
As Michigan goes, so goes Ohio? The big (2,262 likely voters) Columbus Dispatch Ohio poll, showing Obama up 49-42, has Buckeye Catholics flipping from 55-44 for Bush in 2004 to 49-44 for Obama. Protestants are just about where they were four years ago; unfortunately, the poll does not break out evangelicals. Jews prefer Obama 66-31--within hailing distance of the 70 percent mark I'm predicting. And note this. Among the 10 percent of Ohio voters who profess no religion, Bush dropped nine percentage points from 2000 to 2004, to 29 percent. McCain now stands 15 points below that. Other than African Americans (also 10 percent of the voting population), no voting bloc is more pro-Obama.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 6, 2008 | Comments (17)
A new Saint Anselm College New Hampshire poll, showing Obama up by 12 points, has him leading among Protestants by seven and among Catholics by four. No white Catholic problem for him there. The poll turned up 70 born-again/evangelical Christians, who broke 54-29 for McCain--providing some more confirmation for my hypothesis that evangelicals in the North are significantly more likely to prefer Obama than their co-religionists in Dixie.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 3, 2008 | Comments (3)
About four in 10 white evangelical Protestants say Sarah Palin does not have the necessary experience to be an effective president, according to a recent poll conducted by Washington Post-ABC News.
Last weekend, two in 10 evangelicals planned to vote Barack Obama, according to survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 2, 2008 | Comments (45)
WASHINGTON - Parents may know best, but when it comes to this year's election, fewer young evangelical voters are taking Mom's and Dad's advice into the voting booth, according to a new survey.
While Sen. John McCain maintains a winning margin among white evangelical Christians of all ages, young white evangelical voters are less supportive of McCain than evangelical voters over the age of 30, according to the poll conducted for the PBS program "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc.
McCain has the support of 71 percent of white evangelicals, but only 62 percent of white evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 29.
"Evangelical voters have been so solidly Republican in the last 20 years, so if this signals a shift, it could have wide-ranging political implications," said Kim Lawton, the managing editor of "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly."
Some differences on social issues also were highlighted in the survey. A majority of younger white evangelicals support some form of legal recognition for civil unions or marriage for same-sex couples. Older evangelicals are strongly opposed.
Both age groups remain solidly opposed to abortion.
"There's been so much discussion about evangelical voters but there's been very little research," said Lawton. "This is the first to confirm there are some generational differences."
Jeff Fralick, a student at Baylor University, the world's largest Baptist university, may be even more confirmation of a shift.
"I believe that Barack Obama is the best choice for president," Fralick said. "For my parents, however, it is a different story."
Fralick has been actively involved in campaigning for the Democratic nominee on the Christian campus in Waco, Texas.
"In the past I feel that they (older evangelicals) have been swayed by the thought that a responsible and religious person voted one way, conservative," Fralick said of his parents. "They may not agree with it, but they can accept that I am following a good path, though it is different than theirs."
The nationwide survey included 1,400 adults, including 400 young evangelical Christians, and was conducted Sept. 4-21. The margin of error ranged from plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for the overall survey to plus or minus 5.5 percentage points for younger evangelicals.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at October 2, 2008 | Comments (18)
Today's Quinnipiac polls of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania show big margins for Obama: 51-43 in Florida, 50-42 in Ohio, and 54-39 in Pennsylvania. He trails by five points among white voters in both Florida and Ohio, but is up by four in Pennsylvania. White Catholics split for McCain 51-44 in Florida, 48-47 and 47-45 in Ohio and Pennsylvania respectively. Nothing much of note there.
But the difference between the South and the North when it comes to white evangelicals is striking. McCain leads among them in Florida by the normal (for Republican candidates nationwide) 3-1 margin of 71-24. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, however, it's 2-1: 62-30 and 62-35 respectively.
This provides some more evidence that, in contrast to the last few election cycles, the white evangelical vote is going to bifurcate--to the benefit of Obama in the swing states north of the Mason-Dixon line.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics.)
Posted by Ted Olsen at October 1, 2008 | Comments (10)
A majority of white evangelical Protestants rated President Bush's performance negatively in a Washington Post-ABC News poll, Jon Cohen writes for The Washington Post.
Fifty-two percent of evangelicals rated the president's performance negative, and Cohen says that higher numbers disapprove of how Bush is handling the economy.
This summer, 47 percent of evangelicals approved of Bush’s performance in office, while 48 percent disapproved, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life from July 31 to August 10.
The survey showed that evangelicals were more supportive of Bush than any other major religious group. Those who disapproved of his performance were 61 percent of white mainline Protestants, 67 of Catholics, and 88 percent of black Protestants.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at September 30, 2008 | Comments (10)
The latest SUSA poll of Washington State serves as an excellent example of how having a big religiously indifferent population works for Obama. Regular worship attenders constitute 37 percent of the population and so do those who attend almost never. Occasional attenders weigh in at 25 percent. The latter divide evenly, 48-48, between McCain and Obama. The regulars break for McCain 54-43, while the almost-nevers break for Obama 68-28. Result: Obama leads in Washington State 54-43.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at September 24, 2008 | Comments (6)
Here's what Pew has to say about religion in reporting its latest poll on the presidential race:
McCain's support among white evangelical Protestants, a key Republican voter group, has inched up to 71% (Obama is supported by 21% of evangelicals). Based only on voters who express a preference between the two candidates, McCain's lead among evangelicals (77%-23%) is comparable to Bush's final margin among this group (78%-21%). McCain has a small edge among white Catholic voters, 48% to 41%. He also holds a clear lead among white Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly (52% McCain vs. 36% Obama). Four years ago, Bush beat Kerry 61% to 39% among this group.
It sure looks as though this race is reverting to type--i.e. to the 2000 and 2004 pattern--when it comes to religion. Thank Sarah Palin for that.
Specifically, the religion (or God) gap is back to previous levels. Among those who say they attended worship weekly or more, the Republican margin has risen from 10 points in August to 18 points in September. Meanwhile, among those who seldom or never attend, the Democratic margin jumped from 19 to 30. Not surprisingly, the Palin choice pulled all evangelicals toward McCain, and a few white Catholics; while the unaffiliated have shifted even more toward Obama. As in the past, frequent-attending white Mainline Protestants showed themselves less inclined to support GOP candidates who cozy up to evangelicals. Between August and September, McCain's margin among this group was cut nearly in half, from 25 points (57-32) to 14 (53-39).
One caveat, however. Pew's polling took place September 9-14--at the height of the GOP convention (or Palin) bounce. Since then, the polls are showing a reversion to the August status quo ante. In other words, this snapshot may be more of a retrospective than a portrait of what's in store.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Ted Olsen at September 18, 2008 | Comments (4)
In the new Newsweek poll, which has Obama and McCain in a dead heat at 46-46, McCain wins white evangelicals by 69-22--still short of Bush's 2004 margin (77-23) but heading in that direction. McCain wins white Catholics by 59-33, a margin 13 points larger than Bush's in 2004 (56-43). Whites as a whole split 55-37 for the Republican ticket, an 18-point difference virtually identical to Bush's 58-41 margin over Kerry. Non-whites back the Democratic ticket 75-17--a differential 14 points greater than the Democratic margin in 2004. The non-white electorate and the white Catholic electorate are roughly the same in size. My guess is that it will be harder for McCain to pick up non-white votes than for Obama to pick up white Catholic ones.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Ted Olsen at September 15, 2008 | Comments (4)
Christianity Today's Ted Olsen asks whether six points' worth of evangelicals should be considered a significant pickup for Obama, given the amount of outreach he's lavished on them. I guess it depends on what you mean by significant. In 2004, George W. Bush improved his performance among Jews by that amount and the general sense was that it wasn't much to show for his administration's record of devotion to Israel. On the other hand, swings of that magnitude in large voting blocs like white evangelicals can make a big difference in states like Ohio, Missouri, Minnesota, etc.
I guess the better way to put it is to note, as pastordan does, how far McCain's numbers fall short of Bush's--16 points. In recent elections, white evangelicals have tended to vote Republican 75 percent to 25 percent. Obama appears to have his quarter locked up. McCain has at this point failed to seal the deal with his entire three-quarters. The battle would appear to be for the 15 percent still undecided.
One final point. Just as the Palin "female" appeal appears to be not to Hillary voters but to Independent Walmart moms, so the Obama religious appeal seems to have made the biggest difference with semi-frequent worship attenders. White evangelicals, like Jews, are not a swing group; so peeling off five or six percentage points is, I would say, significant.
(Originally posted at Spiritual Politics)
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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at September 11, 2008 | Comments (0)
Today's Fox poll has McCain leading Obama among white evangelicals by 61 percent to 25 percent. Bush beat Kerry among white evangelicals by 77 percent to 23 percent. So in spite of Sarah Palin's selection, Obama remains ahead of Kerry's pace in this demographic. Should he win his share of the undecideds, he'd reach 29 percent--not as good as Bill Clinton but a significant pickup nonetheless.
(Originally posted at Spiritual Politics)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at September 10, 2008 | Comments (19)
If you're surprised that two-thirds of people taking the CT poll are supporting Barack Obama, please note that a number of folks are coming from Democratic Underground. There may be Republican sites trying to game the results on the other end of the spectrum, I don't know.
But this is part of the reason why online polls should be viewed as for entertainment purposes only. Actually, while many people enjoy taking these online polls knowing they're not actually involved in research, ultimately they're not for entertainment purposes. Websites use them basically because they increase site traffic, which adds a bit of revenue. Hmmm. Never mind. Online polls are really, really important! McCain supporters unite! Go tell all your friends about the poll and get your side to win! And Obama supporters: Keep up the pressure! Tell all your friends to click on Obama!
This is entertaining after all.
Posted by Ted Olsen at September 8, 2008 | Comments (30)
Gallup has a terrific new survey out on the religious attendance gap--God Gap if you will--among non-Hispanic white registered voters in re: presidential preference. In a nutshell, McCain is rocking along at a better than 2-1 clip among those who say they attend worship at least weekly (33 percent), while Obama enjoys a 12 percentage point lead among those who attend seldom or never (47 percent). These margins are almost identical to the margins between Bush and Kerry in 2004. But there's a shift in the swing group of those who say they attend monthly or nearly weekly (19 percent). Where Bush led Kerry among them by 62 percent to 36 percent, Obama has cut the gap down by two-thirds, pulling to within 9 points of McCain, 41-50. That's where Obama's religious outreach is making its mark, for a pickup of 5 points in the entire non-Hispanic white electorate.
(Originally published at Spiritual Politics.)
Posted by Ted Olsen at September 5, 2008 | Comments (46)
Sixty-six percent of white evangelicals are now backing McCain, up from 57 percent this weekend, according to a new CBS poll.
Cross-posted from Spiritual Politics.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at September 4, 2008 | Comments (7)
Many Americans wanted religious institutions involved in politics over the past decade, but a recent study shows that a the majority (52 percent) say churches should keep out.
Among evangelicals, 36 percent say that churches should keep out of politics, a hike from 20 percent who said the same thing in 2004, a study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows.
The study also shows that 68 percent of evangelicals said they support Sen. John McCain, which is down slightly from the 71 percent of evangelicals that supported President Bush in August 2004.
There has been a lot of talk about the broadening of the "evangelical agenda" since 2004 because evangelicals care about the environment and poverty. The study shows abortion and gay marriage rank fairly low on the "very important" list, but so does the environment, and poverty isn't listed.
The chart below shows the list of what evangelicals consider "very important" from top to bottom.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at August 21, 2008 | Comments (3)
The latest Pew poll, showing a three-point lead for Obama (down from five points in June), has McCain increasing his margin among Protestants from one point to seven--entirely from evangelicals, since he's lost three points off his margin among mainliners. Obama, meanwhile, has gained ground among Catholics, increasing his margin from two points to five. That's thanks to a shift among white Catholics who in June were supporting McCain by six points and now just by one. Nationwide, white evangelicals support McCain 68-24 (hello, Barna?) and white mainliners 50-39. In 2004, John Kerry lost the Protestant vote to George Bush by 19 points and the Catholic vote by five. So Obama is currently running ahead of Kerry in both cases by the nearly identical margins of 12 and 10 points respectively. White mainline Protestants are moving away from McCain and white Catholics are headed in Obama's direction. I'd say it's time to start writing stories about McCain's Catholic problem.
This article is cross-posted from Spiritual Politics.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at August 14, 2008 | Comments (0)
Christianity Today online readers declared more support for Sen. John McCain than Sen. Barack Obama in our poll this week, flip flopping from their support of Obama last month.
The Barna Group's most recent survey found that McCain holds a narrow lead among evangelicals of 39 percent to Obama's 37 percent. Twenty-third percent of evangelicals are still undecided about who they will vote for, Barna says.
In this month's CT online poll, McCain pulled ahead of Obama (44%) with 48 percent, while Obama drew 51 percent to McCain's 41 percent last month.
Last month, 3,189 readers voted compared to this month's 2,532 votes. The polls are conducted online and are usually left up for about three days.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at August 13, 2008 | Comments (10)
A new CBS poll has McCain winning among white evangelicals 58% to 24%. Mark Silk notes that if undecideds broke 50-50, Obama would end up with almost one third of the white evangelical vote, a hefty jump over Kerry's 22%. True enough.
But there's another way of looking at it: despite the months worth of outreach to evangelicals, the speeches, the Very Christian campaign literature, the interviews with Relevant and Christianity Today and Christian Broadcasting Network, the Newsweek cover story, etc -- Obama is still not doing any better than Kerry did. (And Kerry did worse among evangelicals than any Democrat since Mike Dukakis).
Perhaps that's just the nature of the moment. For some evangelicals, shifting from voting Republican to Democrat is a big deal. Maybe they need to pause for a few months in Undecided Land. But it's clear that Obama has not come close to reeling in those fish. And I think it's time for them to be asking whether their approach so far is sufficient.
This article is cross-posted from Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at August 11, 2008 | Comments (11)
The latest CBS poll has white evangelicals choosing McCain over Obama 58 percent to 24 percent, with 15 percent undecided. If the undecided break 50-50, that would give Obama nearly one-third of the white evangelical vote--a big improvement over Kerry's performance in 2004. For him, opportunity knocks. McCain, by contrast, has got to ratchet up his evangelical outreach. By the Republican Convention he should have locked up this part of the GOP base, and as of now he hasn't.
This article is cross-posted from Spiritual Politics.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at August 11, 2008 | Comments (1)
The latest Quinnipiac poll on the presidential race in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin suggests that there may be a regional aspect to the evangelical vote worth keeping an eye on. In Colorado, evangelicals are backing McCain over Obama by a whopping 78 percent to 16 percent. That's substantially better than the 74-24 margin by which Bush beat Kerry in 2004. But in the Upper Midwest, McCain's margin is much lower: 60-27 in Michigan, 62-30 in Minnesota, and just 54-34 in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, the 2004 exit polls failed to ask the evangelical question in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but in Michigan Bush's margin was 76-24--which means that Obama is running well ahead of Kerry there at this point. The hypothesis, then, is that Obama the Born Again Midwesterner has a greater appeal to Midwestern evangelicals than he does to evangelicals in other parts of the country--or at least than to the Dobsonian evangelicals of the Mountain West. Let's see whether future polls bear this out?
This article is cross-posted from Spiritual Politics.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at July 24, 2008 | Comments (0)
Another day, another reminder that the God gap in the electorate heavily favors John McCain, even as Barack Obama screams his faith from the rooftops and McCain wears his close to his vest. A new Gallup poll analysis shows that Americans who say faith is important to their lives--about two thirds of the country--favor McCain over Obama 50-percent to 40-percent.
Among white Protestants who say religion is important in their daily lives--Gallup doesn't say how much of the electorate this represents, but it's a huge block--the Gap grows even wider: McCain enjoys a 36-point lead there.
These are pretty stark stats, but it would be helpful to have some historical comparison. After all, the strongly religious have been the GOP's base now for decades. God-o-Meter will follow up with Gallup and report back.
This article is cross-posted from Beliefnet's God-o-Meter.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at July 11, 2008 | Comments (0)
Well, according to our online poll.
Christianity Today online readers showed more support for Sen. Barack Obama than Sen. John McCain in our poll this week for the first time since January.
Obama passed McCain (41%) by garnering 51 percent of the vote during our poll that closed yesterday. In June, McCain led Obama 50 to 33 percent. The two were tied in March at 26 percent.
Here's a rundown of results from Jan. 4 (1,613 votes), March 3 (1964 votes), April 1 (2,668 votes), June 9 (3,007 votes), and July 10 (3,189 votes). Be sure to take the polls with a grain of salt - they are conducted online and are usually left up for about three days.
This graph is also cross-posted at Christianity Today's liveblog.
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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at July 10, 2008 | Comments (2)
