Spinning Christians
Or more specifically, spinning poll results on Christians. Reuters does its level best to paint a poll by Beliefnet into major significance by hurling the headline: "Poll: More evangelicals sour toward Republicans". Did the Republicans lose some votes? Sure. Is it a landslide away from them? Not even close.
In a Beliefnet poll of 771 evangelical Christians from Tuesday to Thursday, 30 percent said they voted for fewer Republicans than in previous elections. Evangelicals have been a core base of Republican support.
About 15 percent of respondents said they voted for more Republican candidates, while 55 percent said they voted for the same number of Republicans as before.
The findings were in line with exit poll estimates such as CNN's, which found about 70 percent of white evangelicals voted Republican in Tuesday's elections in which Democrats regained control of the U.S. Congress from President George W. Bush's Republicans.
While still strong, that level of support was below the 74 to 78 percent range that different surveys found in the 2004 election.
Significantly, about 60 percent of those polled in the Beliefnet survey said their views of the Republican Party had become less positive in recent years.
"It's not that they are soured with the Republican approach to culture war issues like abortion, it's that they are angry with them on issues such as Iraq and corruption," said Steven Waldman, editor in chief of Beliefnet.com, a Web site on issues of faith.
As with other Americans, the Iraq war topped evangelicals' list of electoral concerns, with 22.5 percent citing it as the issue that most affected their votes.
Respondents were not asked to specify if Iraq was a negative or positive factor, so some who cited it may have voted in support of Bush's Iraq policies. Other surveys have found white evangelical support for the unpopular war to be higher than among other Americans.
Poll questions like this ask people if something is too little or too much and count both equally in the same total. Always a problem with this number when it is tossed around. That 60% number that is so significant to Reuters is explained by the same phenomenon. Will that make the Christian right vote for Democrats? Not really likely.
By Arlo, Sunday, 12 November , 2006 @ 7:42 am
The country is sick of the Republican Christians. Republicans can have the South and the Democrats will take the South off the federal teat. The whole country is sick of the hypocrisy and sexualizing Jesus that we’ve had to listen to for the last 20 years.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, Sunday, 12 November , 2006 @ 7:55 am
Remember, the people pimping these polls believe clowns like ‘St Andrew of the Gob Smack’ Sullivan when they call themselves “Catholic.”
By mokus, Sunday, 12 November , 2006 @ 4:31 pm
This country is sick of a lot of things, but one in particular is for impotent loud mouth know-it-alls to presume they speak for the country, especially when their petulant and ill considered pronouncements are so distant from the norm as to be considered little more that the attention seeking ranting of an obsessed egomaniac.