McCain outdoes Bush in evangelical vote

With all the talk about the religious right being anti-McCain, Steven Waldman reports that both the number and percentage of evangelical voters was higher for McCain than it was for Bush in 2004.

It seemed like 2004 was a high water mark for evangelical influence. They loved President Bush and helped sweep him into victory.

Well guess what: evangelicals made up an even bigger part of the McCain vote than the Bush vote.

Born again Christians or evangelicals made up 36% of Bush vote and, by my count, 38% of the McCain vote.

He says the increase in percentage may be partly due to other groups shifting to the Democrats, but notes that the raw numbers show the same thing:

Some of that results from non-evangelicals – Catholics in particular — abandoning the Republicans while evangelicals mostly stayed put. But the Republican ticket actually drew two million more evangelicals in raw numbers than George Bush did, presumably because of excitement about Sarah Palin and extreme fear of Barack Obama.

Whatever the reason, some four million more evangelicals turned out this time than last, some going to Obama but most to McCain.

This is quite interesting. There was much talk prior to the election about the religious right voters being disappointed in the McCain nomination because they viewed him as a moderate Republican who wasn’t on board with their issues. In 2000, McCain angered many evangelicals when he denounced Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance” and said they had too much influence in the Republican party.

The nomination of Sarah Palin did seem to energize evangelicals and bring them on board with the McCain campaign in greater numbers than previously seen. Soon after her nomination, prominent religious right leader James Dobson, who had previously declared that he would not be endorsing McCain, began to publicly express support for the ticket. But I don’t think anyone really expected that McCain would do as well as Bush with those voters. Waldman asks some obvious questions:

This leaves many questions still open: Polls showed that Sarah Palin cost the ticket votes. Did the increase in evangelical voters she helped trigger make up for that? Since they represent such a key part of the Republican party will they have more clout going forward? Or will they be blamed for the loss and have less power?

In the last week it has become clear that there is a power struggle going on for control of the Republican party in the wake of Obama’s victory. The religious right leadership is arguing that they lost because the party did not nominate someone acceptable to them, while more moderate, less religious voices in the Republican party argue the opposite, that it was McCain’s move to appease that constituency by nominating Palin helped push moderate and independent voters away. Whoever wins that argument within the GOP will set the agenda for the party over the next few years.