Spiritual Politics  

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Spiritual Politics blog

State by State

Leonard E. Greenberg Center

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State by state

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Polls

Democratic caucus entrance poll
Republican caucus entrance poll

Iowa: Religious demographics chart

Democratic Caucus Results

Republican Caucus Results
 

Commentary

1 20 08   The more things change... Mark Silk
 A certain amount has been made--including in this blog--about the differences among evangelicals from one part of the country to another, and between Iowa and South Carolina in particular. It's worth noting, then, that performance of evangelicals in those states, most importantly with respect to their candidate, was all but identical. White evangelicals constituted the same portion of the primary vote (better than half), and just about the same portion of them voted for Huckabee (in the mid-40 percent range). What this suggests is that the differences--for example, between more charismatic types in Iowa and more Southern Baptist types in South Carolina--just don't matter that much anymore when it comes to politics. Back in 1988, when Pat Robertson (charismatic) got clobbered in SC, they did. Check out the details, for Iowa and South Carolina.  by Mark Silk

1 21 08  Huckabee and the born again vote   John Green.
In a previous post, Mark noted Huckabee’s similar performance among born again voters in Iowa (46 percent) and South Carolina (43 percent) and wondered if the religious differences among evangelicals haven’t been overstated. This is a good point: Evangelicals may be more alike than different in the context of a Republican primary.
But a look at all the contests to date suggests a more nuanced picture. Huckabee did get about the same proportion of the born-again vote in the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary, but his margin was much larger in Iowa (27 percentage points over Romney) than in South Carolina (16 percentage points over McCain). In the New Hampshire primary, Huckabee and McCain tied among born-again voters (28 percent each), while Romney outpolled Huckabee among them in the Michigan primary (34 to 29 percent) and in the Nevada caucuses (39 to 22 percent).
Surely lots of factors influenced these results, but it is quite plausible that the kinds of evangelicals in these states mattered as well. Put another way, Huckabee may have a special access and appeal to certain kinds of evangelicals and does best where they are thickest on the ground. In the nomination contests, access may be more important than appeal. Due to the penurious state of his campaign, Huckabee has had to rely on grassroots networks among evangelicals and these networks may not reach all kinds of evangelicals equally well. The more diverse the evangelicals in a state, the harder they are to reach.

1 11 08   What about us? Mark Silk
Yesterday, leaders of the possibly growing left wing of American evangelicalism issued a protest letter to the big media outlets complaining about the fact that, in the Iowa "entrance" poll and the NH exit poll, only participants on the Republican side were asked if they would describe themselves "as a born again or evangelical Christian." Why the polls did that is not a mystery, of course. The evangelical vote is a big factor on the GOP side--and after all, in recent general elections two-third to three-quarters of evangelicals have voted Republican. Still, there's been a lot of talk about the possibility that white evangelicals are going to start looking more closely at Democratic candidates, and one way to gauge that would be to see the extent to which they are voting in Democratic primaries. (Of course, it will be important to include the cross-tab for race, since most black churchgoers also consider themselves born again.) So, to the polling gurus, a hearty second from this blog. To be sure, the news may not turn out to be so good for the evangelical left--but we'll presume that those guys are big enough to deal with something other than Good News.                 

1 10 08  Huckabee and Catholics Mark Silk
Klinkner’s map about the Huckabee vote and Catholics counties in Iowa is pretty interesting. It fits well with what we know about the Huckabee vote from survey data. It may tell us more about the Huckabee campaign than anything else. He won a very large majority of Iowa counties, tapping into the “Protestant majority” in the Hawkeye state. But this pattern raises the issue of the fabled Catholic "swing" vote and whether it will stay in the GOP column in 2008. These data have their limitations, of course: We don't know if Romney actually got more Catholics or not, just that he did better in Catholic counties. Another thought: Catholics report very little hostility towards Mormons compared to evangelicals. So this map may be as much about evangelical skepticism toward a Mormon candidate as it is about Catholic wariness of an evangelical candidate.

1 8 08  Huck and the Catholics   Mark Silk
A few days a ago Philip Klinkner at Polysigh showed that Huckabee tended to lose Iowa's Catholic-majority counties to Romney--signaling a problem for him moving forward to states with big Catholic populations. Yesterday Reuters did a story on Huck's outreach to Catholics in New Hampshire, where there are more Catholics than anyone. It seems too little too late--but clearly something to watch out for in places like Florida, land o' Schiavo.

1 04 08 Fueled by the Faithful  John Green 
As anticipated, Mike Huckabee’s victory in the Iowa caucuses was fueled by support from religious conservatives. Huckabee received 46 percent of the votes of self-identified “born-again Christians” among the GOP caucus attenders, according to the National Election Pool “entrance” poll. In addition, he won 56 percent of those who said that “the candidate’s religious beliefs matter a great deal” and 44 percent of those who said the candidate “shares my values.”
The entrance polls found that 60 percent of the Republican caucus-goers were “born again or evangelical Christians,” which is much higher than the usual estimate that evangelicals make up 40 percent of Iowa Republicans. That hints that evangelical Republicans were considerably more motivated to turn out than their non-evangelical counterparts. But the figure must be viewed with some caution: Because of the limited number of religion questions on the entrance poll survey, these respondents may include other conservative Christians, such as traditional Catholics and Mainline Protestants—and even perhaps Mormons.
In one respect, the Huckabee victory resembles Pat Robertson’s second-place finish in Iowa in 1988: Both campaigns relied heavily on grassroots activity by evangelicals. In fact, Huckabee may have depended upon such “viral campaigning” to an even greater extent because the 1988 Robertson campaign was much better funded. But Huckabee had much broader support, winning first place with 34 percent of the ballots cast, compared to second place and 25 percent for Robertson in 1988. Huckabee won 76 of Iowa’s 99 counties, while Robertson won just 14.

1 03 08    Faith Based  Mark Silk
There's lots to say, and to be said, but let it be noted here that the two candidates who most stressed religion won the Iowa caucuses.