Religion and the 2008 race

Pew has a short study out this week on religion and the presidential vote. The conclusion might be surprising: religious differences between Republican and Democratic voters (the "religion gap") are greater than the gender gap and the class gap.

This gap relates to ideology, with religiosity (measured by church attendance) being positively correlated to conservative positions on political issues and negatively correlated with liberal positions, as was shown in the Baylor religion study which came out a year ago. The same pattern occurred with evangelicalism and biblical literalism.

In a Pew report in February, 61% of Republicans were more likely to support a presidential candidate who was a Christian, compared to 32% of Democrats.

The main factoid that stands out in this week's report is contained in two graphs that show the compositions of Bush's and Kerry's coalitions in the 2004 vote by religion and religiosity. Together the top three categories on these graphs were 49% of Bush's vote and 44.1% of Kerry's vote.

The largest single chunks of those coalitions are telling. The largest category in the Bush coalition was "evangelical protestants attending church weekly": 22.8% of Bush voters. The largest category in the Kerry coalition was "unaffiliated": 19.2%.

This it seems to me is the stark religious divide in presidential elections. The two parties have two very different bases when it comes to religious style. Many Kerry voters in 2004 are pleased by a secular campaign and turned off by overt religiosity, while the opposite is true for many Bush voters for whom his religiosity was a very attractive feature.

The next two largest chunks are also very interesting to compare. They are both the same: "less observant mainline protestants" and "less observant non-Latino Catholics." They form important parts of each candidate's coalition. Less observant mainline protestants were 14.3% of Bush's coalition and 13.8% of Kerry's, and less observant non-Latino Catholics 11.9% of Bush's coalition and 11.1% of Kerry's. Bush won both groups.

Religion in presidential politics is mainly a matter of rhetoric and style. Its importance cannot be discounted, as we are seeing with Romney. David Brooks had a great op-ed during the 2004 race. Here's a section of it:

Clinton made this sort of faith-based connection, at least until he sullied himself with the Lewinsky affair. He won the evangelical vote in 1992, and won it again in 1996. He understood that if Democrats are not seen as religious, they will be seen as secular Ivy League liberals, and they will lose.

John Kerry doesn't seem to get this. Many of the people running the Democratic Party don't get it either.

A recent Time magazine survey revealed that only 7 percent of Americans feel that Kerry is a man of strong religious faith. That's a catastrophic number. That number should be the first thing Kerry strategists think about when they wake up in the morning and it should be the last thing on their lips when they go to sleep at night. They should be doing everything they can to change that perception, because unless more people get a sense of Kerry's faith, they will feel no bond with him and they will be loath to trust him with their vote.

Yet his campaign does nothing. Kerry talks about jobs one week and the minimum wage the next, going about his wonky way, each day as secular as the last.

It's mind-boggling. Can't the Democratic strategists read the data? Religious involvement is a much, much more powerful predictor of how someone will vote than income, education, gender or any other social and demographic category save race.

I noticed after this op-ed piece came out that Kerry started talking about the importance of his Catholic faith, about being an alter boy, etc. etc., which I don't believe he had previously.

The median voter model as traditionally understood, which I've discussed before, might very well be a good model on religious rhetoric for Democratic candidates. Find ways to appeal to the more secular Democratic base during the primaries but then reach out to more religious voters in the general election. The problem is that because it is a matter mainly of style and rhetoric, in other words not issue positions, this kind of shift can seem artificial. It certainly did with Kerry.

With all this in mind, let's look at the "God question" in the last Democratic debate (transcript here, video here.)

Here's the question:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me move on now. We've got a question -- we've got an e-mail question from Seth Ford of South Jordan, Utah.

And he said, "My question is to understand each candidates' view of a personal God. Do they believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened?"

Here's the answer the front-runner gave:

CLINTON: Well, I don't pretend to understand the wisdom and the power of God. I do believe in prayer. And I have relied on prayer consistently throughout my life. You know, I like to say that, if I had not been a praying person before I got to the White House, after having been there for just a few days I would've become one.

This got some laughs, but not as many as Kucinich's answer:

KUCINICH: George, I've been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying to God you were going to call on me. And my...

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

And I come from a spiritual insight which says that...

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a direct pipeline, Congressman.

(LAUGHTER)

KUCINICH: I come from a spiritual insight which says that we have to have faith but also have good works.

KUCINICH: So when we think of the scriptures, Isaiah making justice the measuring line; Matthew 25, "whatever you do for the least of our brethren"; where the biblical injunction, "make peace with your brother" -- all of these things relate to my philosophy.

Now, the founders meant to have separation of church and state, but they never meant America to be separate from spiritual values. As president, I'll bring strong spiritual values into the White House, and I'll bring values that value peace, social and economic justice, values that remember where I came from.

Thank you.

By the way, this last "thank you" made the whole answer seem like a phony rehearsed stump speech, and nearly ruined the effect Kucinich was looking for.

But even the ultra-liberal Kucinich makes an appeal to his religious values at the same time he references the separation of church and state. It seems like the Democratic candidates grasp the importance of seeming religious.

But here's Obama's answer:

OBAMA: I believe in the power of prayer. And part of what I believe in is that, through prayer, not only can we strengthen ourselves in adversity, but that we can also find the empathy and the compassion and the will to deal with the problems that we do control.

Most of the issues that we're debating here today are ones that we have the power to change.

We don't have the power to prevent illness in all cases, but we do have the power to make sure that every child gets a regular checkup and isn't going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma.

We may not have the power to prevent a hurricane, but we do have the power to make sure that the levees are properly reinforced and we've got a sound emergency plan.

And so, part of what I pray for is the strength and the wisdom to be able to act on those things that I can control. And that's what I think has been lacking sometimes in our government.

We've got to express those values through our government, not just through our religious institutions.

This answer fell flat on the religion question we are considering. This doesn't come out in the transcript as much as the video. He spoke without much passion. He didn't relate his answer to his own faith except for a couple mentions of prayer. He brought everything back to secular values. With the whole debate about secular values, this question was a golden opportunity to talk about one's own religious values, but he didn't. This is not to say his response wasn't good or well received--it was the only one to get applause (except Kucinich's joke). It was good, but came off as too cerebral. This style might be a problem for Obama, but perhaps is negated by Hillary's style.

There is a reason behind this response perhaps. Obama's supporters are wealthier, more educated, and more informed that Clinton's supporters, though the former are less numerous than the latter. They former are also probably more secular. Obama could be appealing to his younger, wealthier, better educated demographic, which according to the Baylor study is a more secular population.

On a side note, Obama's supporters are more likely to turn out to vote. As Pollster.com reported: "The hard core Democratic primary electorate was both older (53% over 50) and better educated (46% college degree) than all Democratic identifiers and leaners (43% over 50 and 39% with a college degree)."