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(nine and fourteen percentage points). And they made more modest gains
among less observant Christians, especially Less Observant Evangelicals
(seven percentage points over 2004). Here, Nonwhites were a modest
exception, with just a three percentage point gain over 2004 (and a 1 per-
cent loss over 2002).
In addition, Democratic congressional candidates made inroads into
Republican religious constituencies. They picked up six percentage points
over 2004 among Weekly Attending Catholics (but just three percentage
points over 2002), and made smaller gains among Weekly Attending Evan-
gelicals (three and four percentage points, respectively) and Weekly Attend-
ing Mainliners (two and one percentage points).
These patterns can also be seen in table 6, which reports the congres-
sional vote by frequency of worship attendance. In 2006, Democrats gained
at every level of attendance, but they gained least among the most reli-
giously observant voters, and most among the least observant. The net
result was that the  attendance gap widened in 2006, from eighteen per-
centage points in 2002 to twenty-nine percentage points in 2006. Put
another way, the attendance gap worked in favor of the Democrats in 2006.
THE FAITH-BASED VOTE IN THE UNITED STATES 69
TABLE 6
WORSHIP ATTENDANCE AND THE CONGRESSIONAL VOTE, 2002 6
Worship 2006 2004 2002 Change Change
Attendance Rep Dem Rep Dem Rep Dem  04- 06  02- 06
More than weekly 60 38 61 37 61 37 1 1
Weekly 53 46 57 42 57 41 4 5
Monthly 41 57 49 50 46 52 7 5
A few times a year 38 60 43 55 47 50 5 10
Never 30 67 36 60 41 55 7 12
Attendance gap  30 29  25 23  20 18 6 11
SOURCES: National Election Pool, National Exit Polls, 2006; National Election Pool, National Exit Polls,
2004; and Voter News Service, National Exit Polls, 2002.
NOTE: Attendance gap calculated by subtracting the vote of top row from bottom row in each column.
Implications for the Future. What do these data tell us about the future of
faith-based politics? Such evidence must be viewed with caution, since con-
gressional elections are quite different from presidential contests. With this
caveat in mind, the 2006 results provide some support for both scenarios,
the continuation of cultural conflict and its decline. On the first count, the
expansion of the attendance gap strongly suggests the persistence of cultural
divisions a pattern that extends to the impact of attendance within the
largest religious traditions. Indeed, the Democrats more fully exploited the
less observant (and less traditional) part of the religious landscape. As one of
the experiments with the 2004 vote showed, John Kerry might have been
elected president if this kind of pattern had obtained.
Perhaps in 2006, the less traditional, less religious, and nonreligious
voters increased their backing for Democrats in reaction to the influence of
religious traditionalists among Republicans. Certainly the intense attacks on
religious conservatives by liberal elites laid the groundwork for such a shift.
However, this change may also have reflected increased opposition to the
war in Iraq and anger with President Bush. In any event, these data show
at least a temporary expansion of one side of the faith-based divide.
Meanwhile, the traditionalist alliance among Republicans largely held
firm in the congressional vote. Weekly Attending Evangelicals strongly
70 RELIGION AND THE AMERICAN FUTURE
backed Republican congressional candidates, despite expectations that they
might defect in large numbers. In addition, Weekly Attending Mainliners
and Catholics also stayed in the Republican column, basically returning to
their levels of GOP congressional support in 2002. The fierce assault on
secular liberals (and the Democratic Party) by conservative Christian lead-
ers may well have been a factor in these results. From this perspective, the
loyalty of traditionalist voters prevented the Republican defeat from becom-
ing a rout.
However, given the Democratic gains among less observant voters, the
Republicans would have needed an increase among the more observant to
win the popular vote. Instead they suffered some losses across the board,
a result that provides some evidence for the decline of cultural conflict. In
2006, the Democrats improved their support among Republican religious
constituencies over 2004 and especially over the vote for President Bush
in that year. Less Observant Evangelicals and Weekly Attending Catholics
were most important in this regard, with Democrats gaining at a rate
greater than their overall improvement in the congressional vote. They also
made some modest inroads among Weekly Attending Evangelical and
Mainline Protestants.
Did these particular Democratic gains come from the politics of moder-
ation or the politics of issue displacement? The best evidence is for the for-
mer: some of the most successful Democratic candidates ran as cultural
moderates with an emphasis on their faith, including Bob Casey in the Penn-
sylvania senate race and Ted Strickland in the race for governor of Ohio. In
fact, these candidates had an even better showing among key religious
groups than the national Democratic congressional vote. For example, in
Pennsylvania, Casey won 59 percent of the white Catholic vote, an impres-
sive fourteen percentage point gain over the 2000 Democratic candidates.
There is less evidence in these data for issue displacement of the sort advo-
cated by religious progressives. But it is certainly possible that it occurred in
particular races. Such gains may well have been masked by the major issue
displacements of the 2006 campaign: the war in Iraq and corruption.
Thus the 2006 election suggests that both scenarios for the future of
faith-based politics are possible. Perhaps a more important question is
which approach is likely to be more successful for the major political par-
ties. The answer will be known soon enough, perhaps as early as 2008.
THE FAITH-BASED VOTE IN THE UNITED STATES 71
Appendix: Surveys, Religious Categories, and Issue Indices
The Surveys. This essay is based on the Fourth National Survey of Religion
and Politics, conducted by the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron in
collaboration with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, with addi-
tional support provided by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of
Christianity and Politics at Calvin College and the William R. Kenan, Jr.
Endowment at Furman University.22 The survey was a national random
sample of adult Americans (eighteen years or older), conducted in the
spring of 2004 (N=4,000). The initial sample was then re-interviewed after
the 2004 election (N=2,730).
This survey was the fourth in a series of surveys conducted at the Uni-
versity of Akron. The 1992 survey (1992 pre-election N=4,000 and post-
election N=2,265) is used to estimate the 1988 vote based on voter recall.
A careful comparison with other surveys from 1988 reveals the estimate to
have a high degree of accuracy.
The 2006 Data. These data come from the 2006, 2004, and 2002 exit polls
and were developed at the Pew Research Center with the help of Scott
Keeter and Greg Smith.23
Religious Tradition. All the National Surveys of Religion and Politics con- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]