In the South:
The Undetected
Tide
By John C. Green
One reason religion received only modest attention in the news coverage of
last year’s election results was that technical problems prevented the
release of the Voter News Service’s exit polls. Lacking a snapshot of who
went to the polls, journalists were unable to assess the role of that
much-watched VNS category, the “white religious right.”
Had the white-religious-right measure been available,
it might well have tipped off the media to an important story behind the
Republican victory: the church-based mobilization of white evangelical
Protestants in the South. This phenomenon appears to have been especially
important in Georgia, where it contributed to the unexpected defeats of
Democratic senator Max Cleland and Governor Roy Barnes.
Although the exit polls are lacking, we do have a
survey taken just prior to Election Day (and graciously made available) by
the Pew Research Center. I have weighted the survey to reflect the actual
turnout (39 percent) and apportioned the “undecideds” to match the actual
results (51 percent Republican; 46 percent Democrat, and 3 percent others).
This procedure provides a good estimate of how the
major religious groups contributed to the election outcome—and powerful
circumstantial evidence for the impact of church-based mobilization in the
South. Although the survey does not include enough cases to break down the
vote by state, it does make possible a comparison of the vote for the
House of Representatives in the South and the rest of the country.
The table reports the political “holy trinity” of
turnout, Republican vote, and the contribution to the GOP coalition by the
ten largest religious groups in the United States. Starting at the top of
the table are white evangelical and mainline Protestants, followed by black
Protestants, white Catholics, Hispanic Catholics, Jews, and Seculars
(non-religious people). The three largest groups are also divided into high
church-attenders (once a week or more) and low.
The overall pattern is familiar: White Protestants
voted on balance Republican, and the most Republican group was the high
church-attending white evangelicals—the core of the “white religious
right”—who gave three-quarters of their votes to the GOP across the country.
Republicans also did well among white Catholics. In contrast, the Democrats
had very strong backing from religious minorities: black Protestants,
Hispanic Catholics, Jews, and Seculars.
The turnout columns tend to support the view of most
electoral analysts that the GOP benefited from a very late surge among key
constituencies, especially in the many close Southern contests. For example,
the 51-percent turnout rate for high church-attending evangelicals was the
highest in the South, markedly greater than the same group displayed in the
rest of the country (and surpassed only by Jews, one of the country’s most
politically active communities).
White mainline Protestants and high church-attending
Catholics in the South also turned out to vote at higher rates than their
counterparts in the rest of the country, but by much smaller margins.
Southern black Protestants and Seculars voted in significantly higher
numbers than their counterparts elsewhere, but at rates nowhere near the
high church-attending white evangelicals.
There are, however, conspicuous exceptions to this
turnout pattern, and the biggest involves low church-attending evangelicals
in the South. They voted at a rate of only 19 percent—32 percent less than
their high church-attending co-religionists and eight percent less than low
church-attending evangelicals in the rest of the country.
Significantly, the Southern low church-attenders were
far less likely to vote Republican than all other white evangelicals. They
cast their ballots for GOP House candidates only 51 percent of the time,
exactly the same rate as mainline white Protestants and low church-attending
white Catholics outside the South (groups that include many liberals from
the East and West coasts).
What explains the discrepancy between high and low
church-attending white evangelicals in the South? A prime candidate is
church-based mobilization by the religious right: registering voters,
passing out voter guides, and getting out the vote within white Baptist,
Pentecostal, and nondenominational churches. Such efforts only reach the
people who go to church regularly. As my colleague Lyman Kellstedt of
Wheaton College likes to say, “If the people are not in the pews, they can’t
pick up the cues.”
The documents that appear on page 6 indicate that
church-based mobilization for the GOP was intense in Georgia—which should
not be surprising given that the chairman of the state Republican Party was
formerly executive director of the Christian Coalition. Outside the South,
the much smaller differential in turnout between low and high
church-attending evangelicals (16 percent) suggests far less in the way of
church-based mobilization.
Certainly there was less to be gained. The final column
in the table tells the story: In 2002, high church-attending white
evangelicals constituted 41 percent of the Republican vote in the South,
more than all other white Protestants combined and nearly twice the
percentage for high church-attending evangelicals in the rest of the
country.
Just as labor unions during the Great Depression became
the institutional power base of the Democratic Party in America’s industrial
heartland, so white evangelical churches have now become the GOP’s
institutional power base from Virginia to Texas. It’s time for the news
media to take note.
Table of Religious
Groups and the 2002 Elections: Estimated Turnout, Republican Vote, and
Proportion of the GOP Coalition.
Republican
Vote Turnout
GOPCoalition**
Non-South South
Non-South South Non-South
South
Protestants:
White Evangelical
High church attending
75% 74% 43% 51% 21% 41%
Low church attending 60%
51% 27% 19% 6%
6%
White
Mainline
High church attending 51%
65% 45% 46% 8%
11%
Low church attending 51% 59% 38% 40% 19% 14%
Black
Protestants 10% 6% 32% 41%
1% 1%
Catholics:
White Catholics
High church attending 58% 68% 45% 49% 15% 9%
Low church attending
51% 67% 45% 28% 14%
4%
Hispanic Catholics
27% 39% 36%
7% 2%
2%
Jews
22% * 62% * 1%
*
Seculars 35% 42% 28% 39% 10% 10%
* not enough cases for analysis
** columns do not add to 100% due to small religious
groups that are excluded
Source: Pew Research Center, 2002 Elections
Weekend Poll, N=2950
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