Loading ...White evangelical churchgoers embrace John McCain
flockwoodANALYSIS
It’s quite an irony. John McCain, the candidate who once referred to leading white evangelicals (Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson) as “agents of intolerance,” is far-and-away the favorite candidate of white evangelical churchgoers.
According to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, 74 percent of white evangelicals who attend church weekly plan to vote for McCain on Election Day. Only 17 percent plan to back Barack Obama.
[Click here to see the entire poll.]
John McCain, who was vilified by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson throughout the GOP primaries, now finds evangelicals — and few others — in his foxhole, if the Pew Center is correct.
In the past month, white mainline churchgoers (think Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Lutherans (non-Missouri synod), have shifted from McCain (+10 points) to Obama (+5 points). Catholics have gone from backing Obama by one percentage point to 16 points. Black Protestants favor Obama (+92 points). So do religiously unaffiliated Americans (+42 points.)
The poll doesn’t give a breakdown for Muslims and Jews, but both groups are expected to vote overwhelmingly for Obama come November.
White evangelicals, on the other hand, back McCain by 43 points. White evangelicals who attend church weekly back McCain by a whopping 57 points. Whatever else the selection of Sarah Palin accomplished, it appears to have energized those who share her religious outlook.
Without evangelicals, McCain would be looking (in the polls at least) like a modern-day Mondale instead of a latter-day Dukakis. [Mondale lost to Reagan by 18 points, Dukakis lost to Bush I by 7.8 percent...]
Overall, the Pew Center has Obama leading McCain 52 percent to 38 percent. If these trends continue for two more weeks, here’s how it looks: the most-heavily white evangelical states, mostly Bible Belt states in the South, will vote for McCain. That means Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky and South Carolina will end up red. But Southern and border states that are less-heavily white evangelical will be up for grabs, including: Florida, Virginia, Missouri, North Carolina and even Georgia. The states that have the lowest number of evangelicals or Mormons will go for Obama, sometimes by jaw-dropping margins.
