huckabee4.jpgThe more it looks at last night’s entrance polls, the more God-o-Meter is stunned by the extraordinary degree to which Mike Huckabee’s Iowa win was due to evangelical support. Check out these lines from The New York Times:

A poll of people entering the Republican caucuses on Thursday showed more than 8 in 10 of his supporters identified themselves as evangelicals.
The same surveys showed extraordinary turnout among evangelicals, who represented some 60 percent of Republican caucusgoers. In years past, Republican Party leaders in Iowa put evangelical turnout at about 40 percent.
Mr. Romney’s advisers had been saying that if evangelical turnout rose to more than 50 percent, victory would be impossible for Mr. Romney, whose Mormon faith is regarded as heretical by many evangelicals. Mr. Romney’s past support for abortion rights also troubled many Christian conservatives.

That’s right. Eight in ten of Huck’s votes came from self-described evangelicals. Until last night, God-o-Meter had thought George W. Bush’s 2004 success in winning evangelicals would stay in the record books for at least a few cycles.


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