The problem with this op-ed is that it is 3/4 of a good analysis.
I made similar points in a Public Eye article last year:
"About 14 percent of the electorate in 2000 identified itself as part of the “Christian Right,” with 79 percent of this sector voting for George W. Bush.[2] But contrary to the impression fostered by the direct-mail rhetoric of many liberal groups, not all Evangelicals are part of the Christian Right, and some Evangelicals are actually politically liberal or progressive. Black Evangelicals, for example, overwhelmingly vote Democratic, but they are conservative on some social issues: tending to favor a social safety net for the poor and unemployed, but believing homosexuals are sinful."
-----Original Message-----
From: ira glazer [mailto:ira at yanua.com]
Sent: Sat 9/4/2004 1:58 PM
Cc:
Subject: [lbo-talk] A Hidden Swing Vote: Evangelicals
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/04/opinion/04greeley.html
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
A Hidden Swing Vote: Evangelicals
By MICHAEL HOUT and ANDREW M. GREELEY
Published: September 4, 2004
The press has made a big issue of how President Bush and Senator John
Kerry are both trying to woo voters from groups that usually support the
other side, be they military veterans, Hispanics or Jews. Yet one group
that receives almost no attention is Christian evangelicals. We are
repeatedly told they form the president's unshakeable electoral base.
But in truth, this claim is vastly simplistic: the fashionable image of
masses of white evangelical voters, stirred up by the tricks of Karl
Rove and led by Bible-thumping clergymen, marching in lock step to deny
rights to women and to gays, is hardly born out by the data. Rather, the
real Republican base is the same as it was before Richard Nixon's
"Southern strategy" appealed to religious Protestants in 1968: the
wealthy and the powerful.
Data about the last two presidential elections drawn from the 1998, 2000
and 2002 General Social Surveys, carried out by the National Opinion
Research Center at the University of Chicago, found that the one-fifth
of white Americans who belong to "fundamentalist" churches (like
Southern Baptist, Assembly of God, Holiness, Pentecostal and Missouri
Synod Lutheran) are remarkably pluralistic in their political and social
attitudes. While it is true that white evangelicals tend to be more
conservative socially, as well as religiously, than the average
American, there is little correlation between religious conservatism and
political conservatism. For example, in the social surveys, about 40
percent of Americans who believe in the literal, word-for-word
interpretation of the Bible describe themselves as "politically
conservative."
In the last two presidential elections, about 62 percent of white
evangelicals voted Republican - or about 7.5 percent more than among
other American Protestants. A majority, clearly, but nowhere near
unanimity. And in terms of the electorate as a whole, it's hardly fair
to say evangelicals are a dominant political force. If we measure their
overall political influence as that 7.5 percent differential multiplied
by their share of the electorate - they make up about 21 percent of
voters- it comes to about 1.6 percentage points. Yes, as the 2000
election showed, even an edge that small can be decisive in a close
race. But it hardly amounts to an overwhelming base. Moreover, those 1.6
percentage points are spread across all regions, not concentrated in the
South, where the evangelicals supposedly contribute to the Republicans'
red state advantage.
Clearly, claims that evangelicals have hijacked the nation's politics
are greatly exaggerated. In fact, polling data show that President
Bush's real base is not religious but economic, the group he jokingly
referred to as "the haves and the have mores."
The General Social Survey found that 20 percent of American voters have
family incomes of more than $75,000 a year, while twice that many earn
$30,000 or less. The high-income group (about the same size as the
evangelicals) votes Republican by an 18-point margin, while the
low-income group favors Democrats by 24 percentage points. If the
Republicans were to lose their 18-point advantage among the affluent, it
would cost them about four percentage points nationwide in the election,
more than twice the cost if they were to lose their edge among evangelicals.
And neither region nor religion can override the class divide: if recent
patterns hold, a majority (about 52 percent) of poor Southern white
evangelicals will vote for Mr. Kerry in November, while only 12 percent
of affluent Southern white evangelicals will.
Most poorer Americans of every faith - including evangelical Christians
- vote for Democrats. It's a shame that few pundits, pollsters or
politicians seem to notice.
Michael Hout is a professor of sociology at the University of California
at Berkeley. Andrew M. Greeley, a Roman Catholic priest, is a professor
of sociology at the University of Arizona and a research associate at
the National Opinion Research Center.
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