WASHINGTON (ABP) — About the only thing the Feb. 5 “Super Tuesday” primaries made clear is that religious voters are as conflicted as the general electorate over who the next president should be.
By the afternoon of Feb. 6, with results in from almost all of the states that held Republican and Democratic contests on the largest primary day in American history, neither party had a candidate with a prohibitive lead in delegates.
Moreover, according to exit-poll data, no GOP candidate had a clear advantage among self-described evangelical voters, and no Democrat had a clear advantage among those who attend religious services the most frequently.
The exit pollsters — continuing a policy that some evangelicals have criticized — did not ask Democratic voters if they consider themselves evangelical or born-again Christians.
Looking at nationwide poll numbers for Republican primary voters and caucus-goers, those who identified as evangelical or born again only very narrowly favored former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee over his rivals, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Huckabee — a Southern Baptist pastor before he entered secular politics — got 34 percent of the evangelical vote. But Romney — a Mormon who has reversed his previous moderate positions on abortion and gay rights — got 31 percent. McCain — who generally has a conservative voting record on social issues but has had an uneasy relationship with Religious Right leaders — garnered 29 percent of evangelicals.
“The whole story on the Republican side from page one is the story of a fractured party that can't figure out what it is anymore,” said Laura Olson, a Clemson University political-science professor and expert on religious conservatives. “I think all of these candidates … each one, you can say, is the candidate of a different [GOP] faction in a lot of ways.”
In comments posted on Christianity Today magazine's Liveblog site, one of the nation's foremost experts on evangelicals agreed. “The evangelical community does seem to be divided. The fact that Gov. Huckabee and McCain have done well among evangelicals suggests the evangelical community is open to a broader agenda than they have been in the past,” John Green, of the University of Akron and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said. “One conclusion that one could draw is a lot [of] evangelicals are ready to move beyond President Bush. They're ready to move on to a more moderate economic policy and a different foreign policy.”
Olson said the continued division in the Republican Party is partially the result of the growth and maturation of the politically active evangelical movement in the United States in the last decade.
“As a result of that, it's a lot more difficult for any politician … to rally people who are in this case evangelical Protestants around any one candidate, cause or political party,” she suggested. “In a way, the Religious Right … to an extent, maybe, they're a victim of their own success.”
Whether significant numbers of centrist or moderate evangelicals defect to a Democratic candidate remains to be seen. Olson, Green and other analysts have said that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, in particular, may appeal to younger and more progressive Christians.
Obama — a Congregationalist who has spoken about his adult conversion experience — did not do as consistently well among frequent churchgoers as he has in previous primaries. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton — a lifelong Methodist and active participant in secretive congressional Bible studies — showed significant strength among Catholics, especially in heavily Hispanic states.
Clinton's campaign liaison to religious groups, Burns Strider, sent an e-mail to reporters Feb. 6 pointing out an analysis by the website CatholicDemocrats.org. It noted Clinton's strength among Catholic voters, including her overwhelming victory among Catholics in delegate-rich (and Latino-rich) California.
“A big part of Sen. Clinton's strength in California among Catholics was clearly her appeal to Latino Democrats, who constituted 25 percent of the voters in California,” the analysis said. “They favored Sen. Clinton by nearly [a] three-to-one [margin] over Sen. Obama, who performed more strongly among college-educated and wealthier Democrats. Sen. Obama did somewhat better among Latino voters in his home state of Illinois, beating Sen. Clinton 58 percent to 41 percent in exit polling. But despite winning Illinois [by a] two-to-one [margin], his polling among Catholics was a draw with Sen. Clinton there.”
The website also noted that Clinton beat Obama handily among Catholics in heavily Catholic Massachusetts, which helped her win the commonwealth even though its top three Democratic officeholders endorsed Obama.
“Broadly speaking, the two Democrats are finding that their candidacies appeal to both frequent church attenders of all faiths and also to those who attend less often,” it said. “But Senator Clinton's edge among older white women, who constitute an increasing percentage of church-attending Catholics, and among white men may be a big part of why she is winning the Catholic Democratic vote overall so far.”
On the Republican side, Huckabee surprised some pundits by winning a string of Southern states on the strength of their large evangelical GOP electorates. However, in states where evangelicals do not make up an overwhelming proportion of Republicans, evangelical voters tended to mirror the choices of their non-evangelical neighbors.
For instance, Huckabee came in third among evangelical Republican voters in McCain's and Romney's home states. He came in last among his fellow evangelicals in California, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.
The apparent lack of focus among evangelicals may point to the disintegration of any particular evangelical identity, writer Madison Trammel pointed out on the Christianity Today blog.
“If evangelicals can't be counted on to vote together, are they worth targeting at all?” Trammel wrote. “If conservative, white, male evangelicals vote just like other conservative white males, does it matter that they're evangelicals? If urban, progressive evangelicals vote just like other urban liberals, does their religious affiliation need to be considered?
“Depending on how you look at it, the story of Election 2008 may be the maturing of the evangelical vote — or the increasing irrelevance of it.”
-30-