WASHINGTON (ABP) — Exit polls showed that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama swept all religious categories of voters — from the most faithful to the less devout — in dominating the South Carolina Democratic primary Jan. 26.
However, the media consortium that conducted the polls again neglected to ask Democratic voters if they considered themselves evangelical or born-again — even after protests from Christian leaders and even though they asked South Carolina Republicans that question during their primary the week prior.
“What we've seen in these last weeks is that we're also up against forces that are not the fault of any one campaign but feed the habits that prevent us from being who we want to be as a nation. It's a politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon, a politics that tells us that we have to think, act, and even vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us,” Obama said during his victory speech in Columbia, S.C. He beat his nearest rival, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, by a more than two-to-one margin in the election season's first Southern primary.
Obama won 55 percent of the overall vote to Clinton's 27 percent. Former North Carolina senator John Edwards came in third, with 18 percent.
While both Obama's and Clinton's campaigns have courted moderate and progressive Christian voters, Obama far outstripped Clinton in every religious category about which South Carolina Democrats were asked.
He won his largest proportion of support among voters who said they attend religious services more than once a week, with 64 percent to Clinton's 23 percent. He performed least well among those who said they never attend religious services, with 38 percent to Clinton's and Edwards' 31 percent each. Non-religious voters, however, made up only 9 percent of the South Carolina Democrats who responded to exit pollsters.
The frequency of worship attendance was the only question that pollsters working for the National Election Pool asked South Carolina Democrats. However, their Republican counterparts — who voted in their primary on Jan. 19 — were asked about their religious affiliation and whether they considered themselves evangelical or born-again Christians.
The pool is operated by a consortium of the major television-news networks and the Associated Press, and its pollsters have asked Republicans the evangelical question in each of their primary and caucus contests so far. However, they have not asked Democrats the same question. On Jan. 10, following the first-in-the-nation Iowa and New Hampshire contests, a group of prominent evangelical leaders sent a letter to the polling directors of the news organizations protesting their decision.
“Evangelicalism is not a monolithic movement that fits neatly into one party. For the sake of accuracy and dispelling shopworn stereotypes, we urge you to allow all evangelicals an opportunity to be represented in your surveys and polling data,” the letter said. Among its signatories were Christianity Today Editor David Neff and Redeem the Vote founder Randy Brinson. David Gushee, who works as a Christian ethics professor at Mercer University and contributes a regular column to Associated Baptist Press, also signed the letter.
A spokesperson for Faith in Public Life, a non-partisan organization that coordinated the protest letter, said Jan. 28 the group has received only one response from a representative from the exit-poll consortium. In a Jan. 16 e-mail provided to ABP, AP spokesman Jack Stokes said the group has “limited real estate on our questionnaires” and the survey questions are chosen “based on our internal editorial discussions.”
Stokes, who said the media-query responsibilities for the National Election Pool rotate among the participating news organizations, added, “To protect the integrity of the process, we routinely do not talk publicly about what questions are on our surveys.”
Stokes declined to elaborate on that answer Jan. 28, saying “everything we're saying about this subject is in our statement.”
Katie Barge, a spokesperson for Faith in Public Life, said the data showed that the proportion of South Carolina Democrats who worship more than weekly wasn't far behind that of Republicans. According to the polls, 25 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of Republicans in the state said they attend services more than once a week.
The polls also showed that 54 percent of Democratic voters in South Carolina attend services at least weekly, while 64 percent of Republicans do. Of those who attend only occasionally, 35 percent of Democrats fall into that category, while 29 percent of Republicans do.
In addition, similar proportions of both parties' voters said they “never” attend religious services — 9 percent for Democrats and 6 percent for Republicans.
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Groups criticize religious insensitivity in exit polls, timing of Nevada caucus (1/17/2008)