Friday, November 07, 2008

The true voting divide - Fundamentalists vs. the Secular and non-Christian

Obama seems to be a fairly devout Christian. Even so, the real divide in American voting today not race, wealth or education, it's religion:
Stephen Bates: In the US elections, the religious right remained largely true to their conservative roots | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

... Initial analysis by the respected Pew Forum polling organisation seems to show that about 73% of born-again evangelicals voted for McCain/Palin – down from about 79% four years ago – while non-church goers voted in similar proportions for Obama. Among Catholics – who after all are the largest single denomination in the US and make up 27% of the entire electorate – the margin was much narrower: 52% of white Catholics who are regular Mass-attenders voted for McCain, 47% for Obama, while non-practising Catholics went 61% to 37% for Obama...
The journalist is somewhat confused in the article. When you read the Pew numbers the reality breaks down like this:
  • White fundamentalist* -> McCain
  • Non-fundamentalist Christian (mainstream Protestant, Catholic) -> fairly even
  • Secular, unobservant, Jewish, non-Christian -> Obama
McCain was a pretty secular candidate by GOP standards, Palin is an extreme fundamentalist (Dominionist). So they really tried to nail the base but stretch McCain out to the secular. Didn't work. It's hard to span both camps in one ticket ...

* They call it "evangelical/born-again" and, oddly, limit it to whites.

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