WASHINGTON (ABP) — President Obama and both the Democratic and Republican parties all face tough questions from faith-based voters going into the 2012 election cycle, a new survey on religion and the 2010 midterm elections suggests.
The Public Religion Research Institute released results from their 2010 Post-Election American Values Survey Nov. 17. The study of nearly 1,500 adults who responded to a similar pre-election survey suggests issues of social morality and faith were not on the front burner for the vast majority of voters in the 2010 elections.
Statisticians and pundits at a discussion marking the study's release, however, said the results suggest traps ahead for both parties as they begin the 2012 election cycle: Democrats must negotiate doubts over President Obama’s faith and whether God has given the United States a special role in world affairs; Republicans must deal with apparent fissures among their base over legislative priorities.
“The evidence is the 2010 election did not — at least for now — fundamentally alter the religious contours and outlines of American life,” Washington Post Columnist E.J. Dionne said at the discussion hosted by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
“To see issues related to religious or cultural questions as central to 2010 is in the end, we believe, a mistake," said Dionne, a senior fellow with the Brookings Instititution. "But there is a new constellation of issues related to religion that looms ahead.”
President Obama’s faith
One difficult religious issue for President Obama may be voters’ apparent lack of identification with what they perceive his faith to be. Just 40 percent of respondents believed Obama held religious beliefs “very similar” or “somewhat similar” to their own. At the same time, a majority of respondents — 51 percent — said Obama’s faith views were somewhat or very different from their own.
Those who perceived Obama to not share their faith views were much more likely to hold negative opinions of him. Among those who said they viewed the president’s faith as “very different” from their own, 78 percent viewed Obama unfavorably — compared to 42 percent of the overall population.
White evangelicals were the most likely religious group to believe Obama held faith views that differed from their own. Nearly two-thirds — 65 percent — said the president did not share their religious beliefs.
Christians from ethnic minorities were most likely to identify with Obama’s faith. Six in 10 said his faith views were similar to their own. That compared to 36 percent of white Christians who believe Obama shares their faith.
God-ordained American exceptionalism
A full 58 percent of respondents agreed that God had granted the United States a special role in human history — an idea sometimes referred to as “American exceptionalism” — while 38 percent disagreed. Among white evangelicals, the vast majority — 83 percent — agreed with the statement.
Obama has come under heavy criticism since he ran for president for statements that seemed to question the notion of American exceptionalism. William Galston, a Brookings senior fellow, said that was a misstep.
“I would suggest … that political leaders who challenge American exceptionalism are taking on a heavy burden of proof, and it will not be easy for leaders who want to substitute some other understanding of America’s place in the world for the excptionalist frame of reference,” he said.
Tea Party-white evangelical tensions?
Republicans going into 2012, meanwhile, face tensions both between and within two core parts of their base – white evangelicals and Tea Party supporters. Although the earlier survey found significant overlap between the two groups, post-election results showed some significant differences in priorities among those who identified as Tea Party adherents and white evangelicals.
While a plurality of Tea Party supporters (37 percent) said their vote was primarily a show of opposition to Obama, only one-in-four white evangelicals did. Similarly, nearly three times as many white evangelical respondents as Tea Party supporters said their vote was primarily about local issues (14 percent vs. 5 percent).
On health-care reform, 41 percent of Tea Partiers said repealing the reform law that passed Congress earlier this year should be the GOP’s most important legislative priority. That compared to 32 percent of white evangelicals, the plurality of whom said balancing the federal budget should be Congress’ highest priority. Only 23 percent of Tea Partiers said balancing the budget should be at the top of the GOP agenda.
Tea Party supporters were also more likely than white evangelicals to say discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the country, that blacks and other minorities have received too much attention from the government in recent decades and to say that it is not that big a problem if some have more chances in life than others.
“You may see some real tensions here as these two groups in the GOP coalition wrestle it out over priorities,” said Robert Jones, founder and CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute.
The survey of 1,494 adults who responded to the earlier poll, was conducted Nov. 3-7. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percent.
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Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press
Read more:
2010 Post-Election American Values Survey
Previous ABP stories:
New polls show rising support for gay marriage, little change on abortion (10/14/2010)
New poll finds large overlap in Religious Right, Tea Party (10/6/2010)