Pastordan at Daily Kos’s Street Prophets calls me a hierowanker. I’m not totally sure what that means but I’m pretty sure it’s not a compliment, though it’s hard to imagine a man of the cloth engaging in school-yard bloggery.
Pastor Dan is one of several on the left who have argued that we shouldn’t make too much of Obama’s gains among religious voters. Others include Sarah Posner at American Prospect (“the real lesson about religion of the 2008 election is that parochial outreach to religious voters should be a thing of the past.”) and Kevin Drum at Mother Jones (“Can we stop this? I know we all need stories, and liberals are hungry for evidence that we’re making inroads among religious voters. But we aren’t.”)
Ironically, those on the left are joined by Ralph Reed, architect of past religious conservative victories, who says Obama’s outreach to evangelicals “didn’t work.”
Let’s go through arguments:

Kevin Drum notes that Obama did 4 percent better than Kerry did among the most religious voters – about the same as the national average. Therefore, the religious improvement came about entirely as a result of the overall improvement. To the extent there was genuine improvement among religious voters, he says it was mostly came from Latinos and African Americans.
First, he says the religious vote only grew because the overall vote grew. But isn’t it possible that the overall grew in part because Obama did better among religious voters (40% of the electorate) as well as other groups? An overall improvement comes from the combination of improvements in particular groups. For instance, yes, part of Obama’s improvement among Latinos, for instance, was because of his general popularity. But do we really think that the $20 million he targeted specifically to Latino’s was irrelevant?
It’s also not a given that a rising tide lifts all boats. Obama improved on Kerry’s overall performance by five points — yet did not a point better than Kerry among union households, and gained by fewer than five among suburbanitzes and southerners. Given the growing perception that the Democrats were anti-religion, I think having religious voters merely grow at the same rate as the general margin is a great accomplishment.

Where they focused their religious outreach, they had better results. The few groups that bought ads promoting progressive religious themes pretty much only advertised in battleground states. Obama improved among white evangelicals by 14% increase in Colorado, 8% in Indiana, and 8% in North Carolina.
More important, among the group that was the target of the most attention — young evangelicals — he made significant gains, indeed gains that way out-paced his improvements with the electorate as whole. John Kerry won 16% of evangelicals 18-29; Obama won 32%. The reason that Obama didn’t do better overall among evangelicals is that he actually performed worse with those over age 45, many of whom, I’m guessing, were persuaded that Obama was a bit too Muslim.
All this happened despite the fact that Obama’s religious outreach was relatively small compared to typical Republican fare. Obama’s outreach was orders of magnitude better than Kerry’s but according to Time’s Amy Sullivan, they did little outside the black church until about six weeks before the election. What’s more, Obama’s efforts to win over pro-life voters by talking about “abortion reduction” was hindered by his otherwise consistently pro-choice record and right-to-life attacks on his opposition to the “born alive” bill in Illinois.
Drum also argues that increased support from Latinos shouldn’t count in the argument over whether religious outreach worked.This misunderstands why Latinos supported Bush in the first place. In 2004, Bush did well among Latino’s because Hispnaic Protestants – many of them evangelical – liked Bush’s faith and evangelical outreach. Hispanics who shifted back to the Democrats undoubtedly did it mostly because of the economy but given the importance of values issues for them in the past, I find it hard to believe that Obama’s push to be seen as faith-friendly didn’t contribute to the Latino’s confidence in the Democrat.
Finally, the reality is Obama gained among white evangelicals and white Catholics as well.
I have never argued that religion is the primary reason that someone would vote Democratic. (Cleary, the economy was the number one issue for pretty much everyone). Nor have I argued that “religious outreach” is the main thing that clinches it with religious voters, who mostly vote on a wide variety of factors, faith usually not being the most important.
But Democratic religious outreach matters for reasons that Ralph Reed, ironically, explains best. Though he’s skeptical that the outreach paid dividends this year, Reed nonetheless told God-o-Meter’s Dan Gilgfoff that the Democrats religious outreach strategy was wise:

“Because to be competitive in the South and the Midwest heartland of the country whether you win evangelicals votes are not there are a lot of moderate and independent voters that were beginning to have the view that the Democrats are hostile to religious voters. That was hardening. Even if you don’t get the evangelical vote, if you’re going to carry Virginia and Florida and Indiana and Missouri, you can’t be viewed as hostile to religion and the values that people hold. So the Democrats were smart to begin talking about faith and values.”

Many voters were turning against the Democrats because of religion. The goal of the Democrat was to neutralize the religion factor so that voters could then make their selection on other issues, like the economy.