Here's what Matthew 25 Network founder Mara Vanderslice (pictured) told God-o-Meter about this last issue:

I hope that an Obama administration is going to prove to religious Americans that supported him that he's going to provide common ground on the abortion issue. He spoke directly about wanting to reduce the number of abortions and it's one of the first things people are looking for: How is he going to legislate and lead on that issue?

I wish they had been more vocal on this intention to reduce abortion [on the campaign trail]. He [Obama] said it at different times and locations but the pro-life groups got their message out very effectively, painting Obama as an extremist on the issue. I don't think that's true but they had some success with that. So it's up to a new Obama administration to show us he's going to find that common ground.

Many in the religious left see such untraditional Democratic policy initiatives as abortion reduction not only as a genuine priority for their movement but also as a political necessity if Obama and the Democrats want to hold onto their gains among certain faith constituencies, from white Catholics and evangelicals to Latino Christians to black Protestants.

Years before Barack Obama showed that a liberal Democrat could win in red states like Indiana and Virginia--and seriously compete in North Carolina and Missouri -- there was a lone Democrat in Washington, D.C., who was talking up just such a scenario. In fact, from the moment Howard Dean took over the Democratic National Committee in 2005, he set about re-engineering the national party to meet that goal, plowing millions of dollars that had traditionally been used for TV ads into a new program aimed at organizing every part of the country, including its most Republican enclaves, from the ground up.

Dean called it his 50-state strategy, and much of the Democratic establishment opposed it from the start. As the 2006 midterms approached, then-Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) -- now in line to be the next White House chief of staff -- griped that Dean was starving him of funds in what was shaping up to be a golden opportunity for Democratic gains. "There is no cavalry financially for us," he told Roll Call.

Even after the Democrats reclaimed Congress in 2006, party elders like James Carville argued that they could have won even more races had it not been for Dean wasting money in the Deep South and other long-held Republican territory.

But Dean persevered with the decidedly unglamorous party-building tactics of the 50-state strategy: providing salaries for three or four new staffers (field organizers, press
aides, fundraisers, technology experts) for nearly every state party and training them to
use the DNC's newly modernized voter file. "The model for party building was the Republican National Committee," Dean says. "We copied almost everything and improved on it."

Three years later, Obama has realized Dean's vision, winning five states that had
been in the Republican column for the past two election cycles and coming close in a
handful of other such states. And though he's received almost none so far, Dean deserves a good deal of the credit.

In Indiana, the 50-state strategy gave the state Democratic Party enough money to nearly double the size of its staff by hiring a full-time communications director and three
field directors. That infrastructure not only helped the Democrats defeat three Republican lawmakers in 2006, it also gave the Obama camp a big leg up when it began organizing the state in earnest last spring. "Laying the foundation for what's happening now all occurred during 2006," Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker said just
before Election Day. "Democrats at the national level didn't think they could win here
before that."

In North Carolina, which at press time was still too close to call, the state Democratic Party used its new DNC windfall to hire regional political directors who developed strategic plans with every county chairman in the state for the first time. Last summer, the Obama campaign began supplementing that network with hundreds of its own workers. In previous years, that grass-roots army would have been starting from scratch just a few months out from Election Day. "Local party leaders are always skeptical whenever the national party comes down in the last minute and says, 'This is the way it's going to be,'"state Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek said. "The regional political directors have become permanent intermediaries between local leaders and the national
party, so that hostility toward outsiders no longer exists."

Even before the presidential race, Meek saw the rewards of a beefed-up staff, as Democrats widened their majorities in the state Legislature and picked up sheriff and county commissioner spots in traditionally Republican western North Carolina in 2006.
That has made it easier for the state party to field candidates in other Republican-dominated areas. It helps explain how Democratic state Sen. Kay Hagan was able to
handily defeat North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) this week.

"I didn't think there was ever any questionthat the 50-state strategy was going to
pay off," Meek said. "The surprise is that it's paying off so fast."

The 50-state strategy did more than fatten state party payrolls. After fixing the DNC's glitch-plagued voter file, Dean opened it to state parties free of charge and
insisted they learn to use it, sending holdouts to remedial training in Cleveland. "We
got technology that predicted with 85 percent certainty how someone would vote
based on their credit card [purchases]," Dean said. "The Republicans had that for
years."

Dean is reluctant to take credit for Obama's red-state victories. "The reasons why
we're doing well in these states has more to do with him than with me," he said in an interview just before Election Day. "It was fortuitous that we complemented each other ...
you have someone running the party with a 50-state strategy and a candidate with the
ability to appeal across a lot of the lines that the Republicans drew in America."
Indeed, most of Obama's success in the red states is his own. His grass-roots forces
ultimately dwarfed the DNC organizing effort, and his message was designed to transcend the partisan divide. But that's just evidence that Dean's 50-state strategy, once widely derided as a costly diversion, is on its way to becoming party orthodoxy.

Emanuel and Carville declined to comment.

Amid today's talk that Barack Obama has narrowed the God Gap, God-o-Meter checked in with Ralph Reed, who spearheaded religious outreach for George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns and who pioneered such outreach for Republicans as executive director of the Christian Coalition.

What surprised you in the exit polls?

The durability--in a difficult election cycle--of the Republicans' conservative coalition--the overwhelming margin for McCain among evangelicals was about what Bush got four years ago. I don't think anyone would have anticipated that six or eight months ago. I don't think that was due entirely to the Palin effect, although she helped.

But the Republican Party has to do some retooling of the party's grassroots infrastructure, its message and the messengers because we lost some states last night that we haven't lost in two generations, like Virginia and Indiana.

So one surprise was that evangelicals, who were seen to be despondent over the McCain and the GOP, turned out in droves.

But a truly successful majority party is a multitasking party that tends to its core supporters and reaches out to those who haven't always felt welcome in their ranks. Obama clearly did that. He never wavered from his core liberal positions... But he reached out to evangelicals, which was a smart thing to do. Now, it didn't' work. e tried to emulate Martin Luther King in speaking about the challenges of the poor and left behind in a way that the white majority could hear.

Ronald Reagan did that, reaching out to Catholics and blue collar voters. And four years ago, Bush got 44-percent of the Hispanic vote even while winning 78-percent of evangelicals. So it's not an either or--you got to do both. The party has to stay true to social conservative but also has to figure out a way to win younger voters and African Americans and Hispanics.

If Obama's evangelical outreach failed, why was it a smart thing to do?

Because to be competitive in the South and the Midwest heartland of the country whether you win evangelicals votes are not there are a lot of moderate and independent voters that were beginning to have the view that the Democrats are hostile to religious voters. Tgat was hardening. Even if you don't get the evangelical vote, if you're going to carry Virginia and Florida and Indiana and Missouri, you can't be viewed as hostile to religion and the values that people hold. So the Democrats were smart to begin talking about faith and values.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery. If you look at what we did at Christian Coalition and then with the Bush campaign, [the Democrats] tried to beat us by attacking us. And it dint' work. And after about 15 years of attacking the values message, the Democrats decided to copy it and it was smart.

That's a welcome mat to Republicans--they shouldn't attempt to veer way from the values message. You can say a lot about what caused this [McCain's defeat] but it wasn't caused by the Republican Party's values message. In two states that McCain lost, Florida and California, McCain lost even as marriage amendments won.

But do you worry that McCain's loss will be blamed on Sarah Palin and other religious conservatives, who may have scared off independent voters?

I'm not worried at all. If you look at the polling, from the time Palin was selected around August 31 to September 20, when Lehman Brothers cratered and the DOW lost 25 percent and you have a credit crisis and financial panic, MCain was doing fairly well among independents and better among soft Democrats.

The Palin effect was across the board. It energized the base and caused independents and women to give her a second look. The gap began to yawn again around the financial panic. It was after McCain suspended his campaign and went to Washington and was not able to come up with a solution that united his party. But if you talk to people on the ground, the volunteers, the door-to-door knockers [for McCain], they were invisible until McCain selected Palin. I think it's revisionist history to blame the bottom of the ticket for issues that were always top of the ticket.

There's been a lot of talk about Palin's future. How can she have a future as a national candidate if her appeal is strong but limited to the Republican base--largely its religious base?

The strong but limited appeal was based on the ticket. The ticket underperformed among independents and those outside the Republican coalition. The sinking tide lowered all boats. But I don't think it's fair to particularize it to her. She has not yet been tested as a candidate in a normal national campaign, where she'd get the opportunity to introduce herself to voters in a primary.

I'd argue that if Obama had not run for president and Hillary Clinton would have won the nomination and then selected Obama as her running mate, with Rev. Wright and Rezko and Ayers and his voting record, he would have never had the opportunity to litigate all that like he did in the primaries.

One was the line that Obama was poised to make big gains among white votes, especially evangelicals, who were undergoing a generational shift in their political thinking and reexamining their longstanding allegiance to the GOP. Obama made modest improvements among white evangelicals compared to John Kerry in 2004, but it was nothing historic; white evangelicals backed McCain yesterday by 74-percent.

Another was that evangelical turnout would be dampened by their ambivalence over John McCain and disillusionment with the GOP. Didn't happen, In fact, white evangelical turnout represented a significantly bigger share of the vote in states like Ohio and Indiana than in 2004.

And now this: remember that storyline about Obama struggling to win Jewish voters, given his support for negotiating with Iran, his past support for the Palestinian cause, the false Muslim rumor campaign, the fact that he wasn't Hillary Clinton, etc.? Well, he got 82-percent of those votes, compared to 75-percent for Kerry. It turns out the one white religious constituency that Obama made serious inroads in is the one that the news media said he was struggling for.

But most of the narrowing appears to have come at the hands of minority voters, the ones that have historically formed the Democratic party base, rather than the white religious voters that the Obama campaign and its faith-based allies wooed so strenuously.

Among white Catholics, Obama fared only slightly better than Kerry, winning 46-percent compared to 43-percent for the 2004 Democratic nominee. Among white evangelicals, Obama won 25-percent, compared to Kerry's 21-percent. While these are improvements over the Democratic showing four years ago, it's important to remember that Bush was an aberration. He formed a special bond with evangelicals and organized an unprecedented religious outreach campaign that targeted white Catholics in a major way.

When seen that way, Obama's success narrowing the God Gap is more of a return to the traditional levels of support for a Democratic nominee that predated Bush's standout 2004 performance. It's difficult to provide hard numerical evidence of that because of the way faith-related questions were asked in exit polls prior to 2004 and because of the way those polls was provided, but religious scholars like John Green of University of Akron say they suspect this was the case.

Saw your post on our religious vote memo. One point of clarification: though we do think the economy is only one piece of the puzzle, we agree that it's a top priority for all voters. We pointed out that "Economic issues topped the list of most important issues among all religious groups" in our Faith and American Politics Survey findings and the memo states on pgs. 3-4, "A broader issue agenda also leads religious voters to view economic issues in moral terms. With the economy as the top issue of concern among all religious groups, organizations like Faith in Public Life, Faithful America, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Sojourners have been emphasizing the moral imperatives inherent in economic policy with online actions and ad campaigns." Also, the general political conversation these days is "it's the economy stupid." From our religion & politics angle, we're looking to contribute a more nuanced story. Of course the economy is effecting all voters, but this memo is about factors that uniquely influence religious voters, particularly evangelicals and Catholics.

Economy most important issue: Six in 10 voters

Family situation gotten worse in last four years: At least four in 10 voters

(6:46) Early evangelical numbers: CNN's Bill Schneider just reported that McCain won white evangelical voters 72-percent to 26-percent. But that's not the full story. Obama did much better among white evangelicals among may states, winning Minnesota. And in a handful of states, including all-important Ohio, he narrowed Bush's evangelical advantage significantly.

(7:00) Beliefnet's Steve Waldman reports that exit polls show that Obama has narrowed the God Gap substantially:

Bush beat Kerry among weekly church-goers by 61-percent - 39-percent. McCain is beating Obama 54%-44%

(7:38) Yet more evidence of the God Gap between religious conservatives like Sarah Palin and the GOP's more secular party establishment? Politico reports:

Steve Schmidt, talking to reporters today on McCain's plane as they made two final stops, offered a revealing non-answer when asked if he was happy with the selection of Sarah Palin.

"You know, we'll uh, I'm not going to do, there'll be time for all the post mortems in the race," Schmidt said.

Asked if he was happy with what she had done for the ticket, Schmidt again deflected the question.

"I think that, you know, I think we'll know in a few hours what the results are, you know and I, there'll be a time for all the post mortem parts of it," Schmidt said. "That's not this afternoon before the polls close."

Plainly, Schmidt is trying to be a good soldier in the waning hours of the election. But that he wouldn't offer even the sparest of phrase for his candidate's running mate while polls are still open underscores the perception, reinforced by polls, that she hurt more than helped.

(8:02) Could evangelical turnout be up over 2004?

That'd be something, given that 3.5 million more evangelicals turned out that year than in 2000, mostly thanks to Karl Rove's and the GOP's unprecedented evangelical get-out-the-vote effort. But Huffington Post reports that Indiana, evangelical turnout is up over 2004, with Obama making modest gains over John Kerry:

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.

Still, that's a net gain for McCain. Trends like that elsewhere would put an end to the theory that evangelicals are unexcited about McCain. Is there Sarah Palin's handiwork?

(8:14) Fox News Channel is projecting that state senator Kay Hagan has defeated North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole. The race recently saw Dole airing an ad insinuating that Hagan was "Godless"--and a response ad from Hagan testifying to her faith. More evidence that Dems can talk about faith and win. Makes 2004 seem like ancient history.

(9:00) A handful of sources suggest that the Kay "Godless" Hagan's defeat of North Carolina U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole was decisive. It wasn't a squeaker. This was a state that then North Carolina Senator John Edwards couldn't carry for the Kerry-Edwards ticket in 2004.

(9:12) Nowhere did the white evangelical vote matter more in 2004 than in Ohio. Evangelicals there, who constituted 25-percent broke for George Bush over John Kerry 76-24. And according to CNN's exit polls, McCain did exceedingly well among Ohio white evangelicals today, winning them 70-29. Bush level, no, but Bush had a very special bond with evangelical voters. This is totally in line with how Republicans have performed with white evangelicals historically.

So much for white evangelicals souring to John McCain. And get this: white evangelicals accounted for a full 30-percent of voters in Ohio today. If McCain loses tonight, as expected, Sarah Palin will doubtless get a lot of blame. But it looks like she did her job in a lot of places: rallying the party's evangelical base.

(9:30) Exit polls in Indiana: White evangelicals break for McCain 69-30, compared to 2004's 77-22 break for Bush. An improvement for Democrats, no question. But GOM stresses that comparing 2008 evangelical numbers to 2004 ain't fair, given Bush's special bond with those voters.

What really strikes GOM is that evangelical turnout, as high as it was in 2004, is up even higher as a share of the total electorate this year: 43-percent of the electorate in Indiana today, compared to 35-percent in 2004. This blows the theory that evangelicals would stay home this year out of the water. Exactly the opposite has happened.

(10:07) In Ohio, which the networks have called for Obama, the Illinois senator won Catholics 51-47. That' compared to a 55-44 Ohio Catholic breakdown for Bush in 2004. It's a small but significant inroad for Obama. That's what his faith outreach seems to be adding up to: modest but important gains among important faith constituencies--though still losing some of the important ones--that are adding up to narrow victories in places lik the Buckeye State.

(10:15) The media, and GOM, are obsessed with how white evangelicals and white Catholics are voting. Obama is making modest inroads among those groups compared to 2004, though the patterns in those groups line up with the historical patterns that predated 2004. But he's making much bigger gains among minority voters and those who identify as having no religion. In 2004, "white nones" went to Bush 64 - 36. This time, they broke for Obama 74 - 12. Now that's an inroad. Yes, Obama is making some gains among the faithful. But it's the unreligious who really swoon for him.

(10:50) In Pennsylvania, Obama lost Catholics 52 - 48, even though John Kerry narrowly won them in 2004. Obama split Protestants evenly with McCain. So how did he win the Keystone state? Big spikes in the "other religion" and "no religion" categories. That's as important a story as the (much remarked upon) success of Obama's religious outreach.

(11:00) Obama wins.

Here's what she said:

"You know, if there is a role in national politics, it won't be so much partisan," she said. "My efforts have always been here in the state of Alaska to get everybody to unite and work together and progress this state."

"It would certainly be a uniter type of role," she added.

Asked if she had any regrets about the campaign, Palin bemoaned "the state of journalism today."

"The blogosphere, the two-, three-hour news cycles, where just too much is reported based on gossip and innuendo and things taken out of context," she explained, adding that she'd like to help improve the profession because she has "great respect for the world of journalism."

GOM thinks that's pretty telling. Though Palin was a hit among the GOP's religious base and bombed among pretty much everyone else--illustrating the nation's enduring culture war divisions--she's vowing to become a uniter. Is this Palin looking to broaden her support base for 2012 in light of her narrow appeal in this election cycle? Or does she actually have a point--that she'd always been a uniter in Alaska (were she had a track record of working with Democrats and declined to make hot button social issues a key part of her governership) and has been unfairly portrayed as a divisive figure, as the Christian Right's poster girl, by the national news media?

Has Palin, been socially conservative, Post-Christian RIght, Huckabeesque figure all along? It's an important question, since her image as the opposite sort of figure, as an old line culture warrior, may have sunk the Republican ticket. At the same time, it's worth remembering that Mike Huckabee--the Baptist preacher that even a secular liberal could love--failed to get traction outside of the GOP's evangelical base.

Should McCain lose, Palin and Huckabee may be slugging it out to become the next great hope of the Christian Right. But do either of them have a political future on the national stage beyond that? The overwhelming evidence so far suggests not.

God-o-Meter agrees with the likely trends that Faith in Public Life has identified. But it questions FPL's rationale for Obama's likeky gains among the faithful, which it claims is the result of Democrats' faith outreach, the rise of the Religious Left, and shifting terrain on hot button issues among evangelicals and the broader electorate.

But Faith in Public Life has left out the biggest reason for the shift of various faith constituencies to the Democratic column. It's the economy, stupid.

Beliefnet's recent 12 Tribes of American politics survey showed that economic woes had dramatically eclipsed hot button social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. In one of the most dramatic examples, one in three Latino Christians said social issues were most important in 2004, when Bush won 45-percent of them. This year, only one in eight say those social issues are most important. And 61 percent say the economy is their topmost concern.

The Iraq war, too, has turned off relgious voters to the GOP.

What the newly faith-friendly Democrats and a burgeoining Religious Left have done is to help Barack Obama and the rest of his party take advantage of disenchantment over the economy and the war by making religious voters a lot more comfortable with them.

It's not so much that religious voters' increasing support for the Democrats is faith-based. It's that there's a lot less faith-based revulsion to the Democrats than there used to be.

Here's the memo from Faith in Public Life:

TO: Political and religious experts and analysts FROM: Katie Paris and the Faith in Public Life Team RE: The 2008 Religious Vote

Changes in voting behavior among key religious groups from four years ago could make the difference for Sen. McCain or Sen. Obama today. This memo draws on polling data from 2004 through this week to identify 5 RELIGIOUS VOTE SHIFTS TO WATCH and points to trends and developments in faith and politics over the last four years to identify 5 FACTORS SHIFTING RELIGIOUS VOTERS.

HIGHLIGHTS
RELIGIOUS VOTE SHIFTS TO WATCH

• GOP grip on Midwestern white evangelicals appears to be slipping. Obama stands to improve upon Kerry's performance among evangelicals by more than 10% in states like OH and IN. He has not made gains nationally, but even a 5% increase would be significant given the size of this voting bloc.

• Catholic vote overall likely to back Obama, especial Latino Catholics. White Catholics are still a wild card, but Obama appears likely to gain more votes from them than did Kerry or Gore.

• Mainline Protestants are closely divided. After favoring Bush by 10 points over both Gore and Kerry, their preference for the Republican ticket is dissipating.

• Hispanic evangelicals likely to swing to Obama after backing Bush strongly in 2004.

5 FACTORS SHIFTING RELIGIOUS VOTERS

• The broadening of the evangelical agenda. Evangelicals are emphasizing a broader set of issues, including poverty, the environment and global concerns.

• The terrain has shifted on social issues. A common ground approach to abortion emphasizing abortion reduction has emerged and same-sex marriage has lost prominence on the national stage.

• Progressive religious groups have gained prominence while the religious right has faltered. Presidential candidates' participation in forums sponsored by progressive religious groups demonstrates this shift.

• Campaign faith outreach is a whole new ball game. Obama has pursued religious voters more aggressively than Gore or Kerry, and McCain has not replicated Bush's connection with religious conservatives.

• Palin effect unclear. While Palin has energized some religious conservatives, her impact among them electorally may be overstated and she may be pushing moderate people of faith away from the GOP ticket.

Family Research Council Action has this last-minute ad running in Virginia, where polls show Barack Obama a few points up, hitting Obama for declining to oppose partial birth abortion in Illinois.

For all of the candidates'--and the electorate's--focus on economic issues, the final days of the campaign have seen a lot of these hot-button ads, a testatment to the emotional power that social conservatives think such arguments have. The Pennsylvania Republican Party's Rev. Wright ad fits into that category.

Honestly, God-o-Meter is shocked that state Republican parties have been so deferntial until now in honoring John McCain's request that they refrain from making such Wright-centric ads. Was that a courtesy on McCain's part? Or more evidence of discomfort discussing matters religious?

Update: GOM noticed that the video for this ad on the Pennsylvania Republican Party's web site wasn't working and called to inquire about whether the party had pulled the ad. Party spokesman Michael Barley assured GOM that the ad is still up and running, but was decidedly sheepish about the ad's creation or timing. "The only comment I have," Barley said, "Is it's running on broadcast TV and is an indepednent independent expenditure not authorized or affiliated with any candidate or candidate committee."

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole's challenger Kay Hagan has create a new ad called "Belief" in response to Dole's "Godless" spot, which attacked Hagan for attending a fundraiser connected to someone who is connected to an atheist group.

This is a very post-2004 way for a Democrat to respond to a faith-based attack: quickly responding to the attack head-on and testifying unabashedly about one's faith commitment. Which is to say, it's a very "Obama" way to respond to a faith-based attack, as opposed to the "Kerry" way of responding: wringing one's hands and marrying each public pronouncement about one's faith to a reaffirmation of support for the complete separation of church and state.

The "Godless" ad that U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole is running against her Democratic challenger in North Carolina is a stark reminder that faith-based attacks have been kept to a relative minimum in the presidential race.

It's also a reminder, to GOM at least, that the McCain campaign has thus far refrained from running ads against Obama based on Jeremiah Wright, his longtime pastor. That kind of attack would be the opposite of Dole's in North Carolina; rather than paint Obama as "Godless," it would skewer him for cozying up to a man of the cloth.

To God-o-Meter, there's a pattern here: faith-based attacks tend to come from Republicans who are religious and who've incorporated their faith into their political personas, e.g. Dole and Palin. And McCain, a Republican who's famously uncomfortable incorporating faith into his political persona is refraining from such attacks.

So if Palin, Mike Huckabee, or another social conservative gets the nod in 2012, due to a post-McCain religious right uprising, we could be looking at more faith-based attacks at the presidential level. By then, though, Rev. Wright would be old news