Joel
On May 2, 2006, at 12:12 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> <http://pewresearch.org/obdeck/?ObDeckID=22>
>
>
> Poll Analysis
> Will White Evangelicals Desert the GOP?
> So Far, This Most Republican of Groups is Staying Loyal
>
> by Scott Keeter
> Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
>
> May 2, 2006
>
> President Bush's job approval rating has fallen, and his personal
> favorability is down significantly as well, leading many
> Republicans to worry about the impact a weakened president will
> have on his party's showing in the fall mid-term elections. Even
> among one of the president's most supportive constituencies, white
> evangelical Protestants, Mr. Bush has suffered declines. Given the
> importance of evangelicals for the electoral successes of the
> Republican Party over the past several years, how serious is Bush's
> slump among this key voter group for the party's prospects this fall?
>
> A new analysis by the Pew Research Center finds that while the
> president still has the support of a majority of white evangelical
> Protestants, significantly fewer of them now approve of his
> performance in office (55% approve, 38% disapprove) than was true
> at the start of his second term when 72% approved and only 22%
> disapproved.
>
> Indeed, since he began his second term in office, Bush's approval
> rating has declined as much among white evangelicals as among the
> public as a whole. In addition, his personal ratings among
> evangelicals are also now more negative than ever before - 35% now
> have an unfavorable view of Bush, compared with 21% of registered
> evangelical voters in October 2004. Moreover, 45% of evangelicals
> agreed with the statement that "I am tired of all the problems
> associated with the Bush administration" - less than a majority but
> a sizable number nonetheless.
>
> Yet there is little indication, as of now, that evangelicals are
> likely to abandon the Republican Party electorally. Pew's polling
> finds that the percentage of white evangelicals identifying as
> Republicans has actually increased slightly in 2006, and the number
> of these who say they intend to vote for Republican candidates this
> November is no lower now than it was at a comparable point in 2002,
> the last mid-term election.
>
> Evangelicals and the Republican Party
>
> Evangelical Christians have been a powerful force in American
> politics at many points in the nation's history. They played a key
> role in the rise of the abolitionist movement, in the triumph of
> the progressive movement, and more recently in the rise of the
> religious right in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite considerable
> ambivalence about engaging in politics, many American evangelicals
> have come to believe that participation in politics is necessary to
> defend their values and promote their vision of society. Their
> growing solidarity on behalf of the Republican Party has been
> critical to the party's electoral successes of the past decade.
>
> Indeed, in many respects, white evangelicals have become the
> bedrock of the GOP. In the 2004 election, they were the largest
> single demographic group among Bush voters, constituting fully 35%
> of his total. By comparison, African Americans - the most loyal of
> Democratic constituencies - constituted only about one-fifth (21%)
> of Kerry's voters.
>
> The rising political clout of evangelical Christians is not the
> result of growth in their numbers but rather of their increasing
> cohesiveness as a key element of the Republican Party. The
> proportion of the population composed of white evangelicals has
> changed very little (19% in 1987; 22% now) and what growth there
> was occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
>
> However, in 1987, white evangelical Protestants were closely
> divided in their partisan attachments, with 34% identifying as
> Republicans and 29% as Democrats. The shift toward Republican
> identification among white evangelicals came in two stages. In the
> late 1980s, white evangelicals in the South were still mostly
> wedded to the Democratic Party while evangelicals outside the South
> were more aligned with the GOP. But over the course of the next
> decade or so, the GOP made gains among white Southerners generally
> - and evangelicals in particular - nearly eliminating this regional
> disparity. Since the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Republican
> identification has grown among both Southern and non-Southern
> evangelicals.
>
> Today, Republicans outnumber Democrats among white evangelicals by
> more than two-to-one (51%-22%), and hold a 63%-29% lead when
> partisan "leaners" are included. Although Republican Party
> identification among both evangelicals and non-evangelicals
> increased slightly following the September 11 attacks, it has since
> retreated to pre-9/11 levels for non-evangelicals. Among
> evangelicals, it has continued to rise. Today, white evangelicals
> make up 22% of the population, and constitute nearly four out of
> every ten (39%) Republicans.
>
> Moreover, white evangelicals are approaching the same degree of
> political solidarity with the GOP that African-American voters
> accord the Democratic Party. In the 2004 presidential race, George
> W. Bush received 78% of their vote, up 10 percentage points from
> 2000. And while Bush also increased his margin among other
> religious groups (his overall gain from 2000 to 2004 was 3
> percentage points; among Catholics, it was 5 percentage points, and
> among both Jews and black Protestants, 6 points), white
> evangelicals provided the highest level of support for Bush among
> any religious group, and represented the largest increase of any
> group in his vote share compared with 2000.
>
> Evangelicals and the 2006 Mid-term Elections
>
> Evangelicals were nearly as solid in their support of Republican
> House candidates in 2004 as they were for President Bush. According
> to the 2004 NEP exit poll, 74% of white evangelicals voted for a
> Republican for Congress. But Bush's slump in the polls over the
> past several months has led to concern among Republicans about the
> party's chances this November. Pew's polling shows that a number of
> important groups in the population today - particularly
> independents, mainline Protestants, and white non-Hispanic
> Catholics - are significantly less likely to vote for the
> Republican candidate for the House than they were four years ago at
> about this time.
>
> Notably, however, white evangelicals remain committed to the GOP.
> In an April Pew poll, 64% of evangelicals said they intended to
> vote for the Republican candidate for Congress this fall, while 29%
> said they would vote Democratic (7% were undecided). (By comparison
> only 41% of all voters say they will opt for a Republican in
> Congress while 51% say they will pick a Democrat.) The current
> evangelical split is very similar to the 61%-31% Republican margin
> among evangelicals in a February 2002 poll looking ahead to that
> fall's races, and nearly identical to the 64%-26% margin in Pew's
> final pre-election poll that year. As noted above, 74% of white
> evangelicals ended up casting their votes for the Republican
> candidate in the subsequent congressional election.
>
> Thus there is no sign that Bush's troubles are currently having a
> significant impact on the support of this key Republican
> constituency for the party's candidates this fall. Moreover, most
> evangelicals continue to give the party good marks for the job it's
> doing standing up for its traditional positions. Currently, 59% of
> Republican or Republican-leaning evangelicals say the party is
> doing either an excellent or good job in this respect. That is
> significantly higher than the 47% rating the party earns among all
> Republicans and GOP leaners.
>
> The current views of white evangelical Christians are, of course,
> no guarantee of how they will actually vote this fall - or whether
> they will vote at all. One concern among Republicans is that while
> the party's troubles may not lead many of its supporters to defect
> to the Democrats, it might lessen their enthusiasm for turning out
> to vote or for working on behalf of the party's candidates. And it
> remains an open question as to whether or not continued strong
> support from white evangelicals will be enough to offset the GOP's
> declining support from other groups. But for now, despite the
> concerns that many evangelicals express about Bush, it appears that
> Republicans can continue to count on the strong support of this
> core constituency.
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