{"id":491,"date":"2008-11-11T11:25:40","date_gmt":"2008-11-11T11:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html"},"modified":"2008-11-11T11:25:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-11T11:25:40","slug":"who-are-the-obamagelicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html","title":{"rendered":"Who Are The Obamagelicals?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nationally, 25% of white evangelicals voted for Obama. In certain key states, the numbers were higher. He saw a 14% increase in support from white evangelicals in Colorado, 8% in Indiana,  8% in North Carolina and 4% in Ohio.<br \/>\nMost important, he won 32% of young evangelicals (up from 16% for McCain).<br \/>\nWho are these Obamagelicals &#8211; and how do they compare with the larger group of evangelicals who voted for John McCain?<br \/>\nBeliefnet recently surveyed its readership about who they voted for and why. 1,135 people who described themselves as &#8220;evangelical or Born Again&#8221; filled out the survey. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/News\/Politics\/2008\/11\/Beliefnet-Election-2008-Exit-Poll-Results.aspx\"> (Full survey here)<\/a><br \/>\nLet&#8217;s start with the similarities between Obama&#8217;s evangelicals and McCain&#8217;s.<br \/>\n<strong>They&#8217;re both comparably religiously active.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>87.7% of Obama evangelicals <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/News\/Politics\/2008\/11\/Beliefnet-Election-2008-Exit-Poll-Results.aspx#PRAYER\">pray every day vs. 92.7 % for McCain&#8217;s<\/a>. <\/li>\n<li>72% of Obama evangelicals attend church weekly or more vs.75.7% % among McCain evangelicals.    <\/li>\n<li>Not surprisingly, almost no evangelicals&#8211;either McCain or Obama supporters&#8212;agreed with the statement that the bible is &#8220;Not God&#8217;s word, nor is it divinely inspired.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But there are some stark differences:<br \/>\n<strong>They Emphasize Completely Different Values Issues<\/strong>. Obama&#8217;s evangelicals ranked their priorities like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The economy<\/li>\n<li>Iraq war<\/li>\n<li>Reducing poverty<\/li>\n<li>Character<\/li>\n<li>The environment<\/li>\n<li>Cleaning up government<\/li>\n<li>Access to health care<\/li>\n<li>The Vice presidential selection<\/li>\n<li>Gay marriage<\/li>\n<li>Abortion<\/li>\n<li>Fighting Islamic radicalism<\/li>\n<li>Illegal immigration<\/li>\n<li>The candidate&#8217;s experience<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>McCain Evangelicals listed priorities in a very different order:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Abortion<\/li>\n<li>Character<\/li>\n<li>Cleaning up government<\/li>\n<li>Fighting Islamic radicalism<\/li>\n<li>Gay marriage<\/li>\n<li>The economy<\/li>\n<li>Experience<\/li>\n<li>Iraq war<\/li>\n<li>Illegal immigration<\/li>\n<li>Access to health care<\/li>\n<li>Running mates<\/li>\n<li>Reducing poverty<\/li>\n<li>The environment<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<strong>Obamagelicals are moderate (not liberal). McCain evangelicals are conservative (not moderate).<\/strong>  Only 24.6% of Obamagelicals described themselves as liberals &#8211; half the amount that Obama voters on the Beliefnet survey &#8212;  67% said they were moderate. 8.4% said they were conservative.    Less surprisingly, 79% of McCain&#8217;s evangelicals describe themselves as conservative, 19.% as moderate and only 1% as liberal.<br \/>\n<strong>They Interpret the Bible Differently<\/strong>. One of the most striking differences relates to their reading of Scriptures.  58.7% Obamagelicals say &#8220;the Bible is divinely inspired but not everything in it is the literal word of God,&#8221; compared to 40% who said &#8220;The Bible is the literal word of God.&#8221;  For McCain evangelicals, the percentages were reversed:  74.7% said it was the Bible is the word of God and only 24.6% said the Bible was divinely inspired. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/News\/Politics\/2008\/11\/Beliefnet-Election-2008-Exit-Poll-Results.aspx?p=2#THE%20BIBLE\">(More here)<\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Many Obamagelicals are new to the Democratic side.<\/strong> While 71% of McCain&#8217;s evangelicals said they were Republican, 54.3% of Obama evangelicals said they were Democrats.  What&#8217;s more, a quarter of Obama&#8217;s evangelicals voted for George W. Bush last election and 10.3% didn&#8217;t vote; only 61% had voted for Kerry. By contrast, 87.9% of McCain evangelicals had voted for Bush.<br \/>\n<strong>Obamagelicals didn&#8217;t believe Obama is or was Muslim, McCain evangelicals did. <\/strong>  87% of Obamagelicals believe Obama &#8220;was never a Muslim and is a practicing Christian.&#8221; Only 19.7% of McCain evangelicals agreed with that statement.<br \/>\n<strong>Sarah Palin.<\/strong> McCain evangelicals loved Sarah Palin. 71.4% said her faith and practices made it more inclined to vote for McCain (compared to 56.6% among McCain voters in general).  Only 5.2% of Obamagelicals said her faith attracted them, and 48.5% said it outright made them less inclined to support the ticket.<br \/>\n<strong>Stark Differences on Abortion.<\/strong>  Almost all McCain and Obama evangelicals believe that reducing the number of abortions is important.  But they different dramatically on the right way to achieve that goal. 61% of McCain evangelicals believed that the best approach is through legal restrictions while only 8% of Obamagelicals believed that. Instead, 86.3% of Obama&#8217;s supporters said the best way is &#8220;by preventing unintended pregnancy (through education and birth control), or providing financial assistance to pregnant mothers.&#8221;<br \/>\nAs a result of these different perspectives on how to reduce abortion, they also differed sharply in their expectations about the impact of the President.   Among Obama&#8217;s evangelicals, 50.4% believe the abortion rate is unlikely to be affected by an Obama or McCain presidency, while 27.2% believe it will likely fall more under Obama and only 4.2% that it would fall more under McCain.  This seems to indicate that the argument of progressive pro-lifers &#8211; that abortion rates could go down more under Obama &#8211; has only been half persuasive.  Obama evangelicals don&#8217;t believe a McCain presidency would actually reduce abortion, but they&#8217;re not that convinced that Obama would be much better.<br \/>\nMcCain voters, of course, disagree. 57.6% believe abortion would be lower under McCain. (That actually struck me as quite low. Stated another way, 42.4% of evangelical or Born Again Christians who voted for McCain have no confidence that abortion would have actually declined under a McCain presidency). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/News\/Politics\/2008\/11\/Beliefnet-Election-2008-Exit-Poll-Results.aspx?p=4#EVANGELICALS:%20REDUCING%20ABORTION.aspx?p=4EVANGELICALS:%20REDUCING%20ABORTION\"> (More on evangelicals and abortion here).<\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Obamagelicals support gay civil unions, McCain evangelicals don&#8217;t. <\/strong> Obamagelicals are far more supportive of gay marriage than McCain evangelicals, but on balance they don&#8217;t support gay marriage either.  Only 28.7% said they supported gay marriage. The big difference is that most McCain voters want neither marriage nor civil unions (66.4% of McCain voters wanted neither), whereas a substantial number of Obamagelicals support civil unions or domestic partnerships (53.4%).<br \/>\n<strong>Obamagelicals Believe McCain&#8217;s Campaign Was &#8220;Unchristian&#8221;<\/strong>.   59.7% of Obama evangelicals said &#8220;John McCain has run amore unchristian campaign than Barack Obama.&#8221;  Intriguingly, only 37.6% of McCain evangelicals said that about Obama.   Of all of John McCain&#8217;s possible &#8220;character issues&#8221; the one that bother Obamagelicals most was the &#8220;tone of his campaign,&#8221; far more important than the Keating Five scandal, his cheating on his first wife or his gambling.   McCain evangelicals thought Obama&#8217;s biggest character problem was his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, though they were also deeply bothered by his association with Bill Ayers.<br \/>\n<strong>Praying About the Election<\/strong>. Most evangelicals surveyed did pray about the election but in subtly different ways.  75% of McCain evangelicals  prayed for &#8220;God&#8217;s will to be done&#8221; and 36.7% prayed for &#8220;wisdom to make the right decision in casting my vote.&#8221;  Only 57.9% of Obamagelicals prayed for &#8220;God&#8217;s will to be done&#8221; while more of them (42%) prayed for wisdom.<br \/>\n<strong>The clergy role<\/strong>.   Obama evangelicals seem more likely to attend churches where the pastors are either apolitical or politically moderate. 19% of Obamagelicals said their pastors preached against abortion or gay rights prior to the election, while 41.5% of McCain evangelicals said so.<br \/>\nNote, too, that in the Beliefnet sample, African Americans and Latinos sometimes self declared as born again or evangelical. Together, made up 20% of the Obamagelicals.<br \/>\nFor more on the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/News\/Politics\/2008\/11\/Beliefnet-Election-2008-Exit-Poll-Results.aspx?p=1\"> full Beliefnet survey click here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nationally, 25% of white evangelicals voted for Obama. In certain key states, the numbers were higher. He saw a 14% increase in support from white evangelicals in Colorado, 8% in Indiana, 8% in North Carolina and 4% in Ohio. Most important, he won 32% of young evangelicals (up from 16% for McCain). Who are these&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Who Are The Obamagelicals? - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who Are The Obamagelicals? - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nationally, 25% of white evangelicals voted for Obama. In certain key states, the numbers were higher. He saw a 14% increase in support from white evangelicals in Colorado, 8% in Indiana, 8% in North Carolina and 4% in Ohio. Most important, he won 32% of young evangelicals (up from 16% for McCain). Who are these&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-11T11:25:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Who Are The Obamagelicals? - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Who Are The Obamagelicals? - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Nationally, 25% of white evangelicals voted for Obama. In certain key states, the numbers were higher. He saw a 14% increase in support from white evangelicals in Colorado, 8% in Indiana, 8% in North Carolina and 4% in Ohio. Most important, he won 32% of young evangelicals (up from 16% for McCain). Who are these&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2008-11-11T11:25:40+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html","name":"Who Are The Obamagelicals? - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-11-11T11:25:40+00:00","dateModified":"2008-11-11T11:25:40+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/who-are-the-obamagelicals.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Who Are The Obamagelicals?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}