Yesterday, Missouri State University religion professor/Immanent Frame blogger John Schmalzbauer (politely) accused God-o-Meter of underestimating Democrats’ potential to win over some evangelicals in November.
He could be right. It’s just that when GOM sees polls reporting 60-percent evangelical support for John McCain vs. 23-percent for Barack Obama, despite Obama’s months-long evangelical charm offensive and McCain’s endless evangelical/religious bungling, it begins to wonder: are evangelical voting patterns are too deeply entrenched to be changed?
Schmalzbauer notes that Obama’s mission in improving his showing among evangelicals is pretty modest:
Let me begin by saying that 30% for Obama is still a lot of evangelicals, probably 6-10% of the electorate. This is larger than the Jewish vote, the Asian-American vote (which is 6.4% of the population), and nearly as large as the African-American vote. So it makes little sense for Democrats to write off this constituency.
It’s a significant point. God-o-Meter went back to the results in Ohio in 2004, where the presidential election was decided for George W. Bush, to see whether a modest uptick in evangelical support for Obama (over what Kerry got in ’04) could swing an election.
Here’s what it found:
In Ohio, white evangelicals constituted 25-percent of the electorate, roughly the same proportion as in the national electorate. Bush took 76-percent of the evangelical vote. Kerry got 24 percent. All other factors being equal, if Obama is able to take 29-percent of Ohio’s white evangelicals and pull down McCain’s evangelical support to 71-percent, he’ll win the state, and–if the 2004′s national electoral map were to repeat itself–the White House.
It’s a good reminder: American elections are won or lost at the margins.
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posted July 16, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I grew up Evangelical. I was born in ’74. At age 26 I ended up campaigning for ultra-lefty, Ralph Nader.
A whole host of things happened to me between starting University and being age 26 which lead me to stray from the fold my parents reared me in.
If folks stay in the Evangelical fold (unlike me) the Evangelical-Republican messages could still grow stale. I really wonder how many 20-something Evangelicals realize or even care about the impact of Falwell’s ‘Moral Majority’; or Pat Robertson’s ‘Christian Coalition’?
I think the real test is further out when the consequences for the Iraq war become more apparent. Aging Baby-Boomers are also gonna be exposed to inflation and increased risk, as many of them aren’t even in guaranteed pension plans. The consequences could be very concrete for Evangelicals.
I gave away my political persuasion above. The reason I think McCain still polls so well is… well, to be quite honest – Americans can afford to be stupid.
Flag pins don’t cut the price of gas, nor do they guarantee how a 401K pays out.
I guess a real interesting question could be the following:
If McCain is really serious about going to war with Iran (& by all accounts our military is overstretched) would suburban and rural Evangelicals take kindly to having their kids drafted or going to fight themselves?
posted July 16, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Maybe we’ve reached some kind of middle ground on the question of evangelicals and the Democrats. I agree with Dan Gilgoff that if Obama is able to move evangelicals even a few percentage points in key states, it could make a big difference. The fact that 25-30 percent of evangelicals have voted Democrat prior to Bush/Kerry suggests that this is possible.
Now 2012 may be a whole different story if the young evangelical disaffiliation from the GOP documented by Pew in 2007 continues to hold. Then we could expect to see a more significant shift in evangelical voting.
For the sake of both 2008 and future elections, it would make sense to push the Obama candidacy among evangelical college students. Like college students as a whole, they are likely to be more open to his brand of religious progressivism. This suggests that advertisements in Relevant magazine and outreach to Christian colleges and campus ministries is not a waste of time or money.