If they’ve lost white churchgoers…

October 13, 2006

I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but it warrants a closer look. To best understand exactly why there’s so much pre-election panic in Republican circles right now, it’s probably because they party’s most reliable voting bloc is moving away from the GOP.

The latest Gallup poll, released yesterday, divided Americans into three groups based on race and church attendance: religious whites (defined as whites who self-report attending church weekly or almost every week), less religious whites (defined as whites who self-report attending church monthly or less often), and everyone else. Religious whites, for a few decades now, have not only been reliably Republican, but actually the heart of GOP base. That is, until recently.
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An analysis of USA Today/Gallup poll trend data indicates that while Democrats have made gains across the board on the generic Congressional ballot in the latest Oct. 6-8 survey, the change has been greater among religious whites than among less religious whites and among non whites. At this point, religious whites are equally as likely to say they will vote Democratic as Republican, a marked change from their strong tilt towards the Republicans in surveys conducted June through September.

The chart hammers the point home, doesn’t it? The only major changes are seen with the only group Republicans really need in November. And it’s not just a minor shift — as recently as August, religious whites preferred Republicans over Dems by 29 points. Now, the same demographic doesn’t prefer Republicans to Dems at all.

Put another way, in August, 62% of “white frequent churchgoers” said they plan to vote GOP in the midterm elections. In September, that number dropped to 58%. Now, it’s 47%.

The other two demographic groups, I should note, also favor Dems, but the support has been relatively steady the last several months. It’s the white frequent churchgoers who’ve changed.

Josh Marshall helped capture the implications.

If that number is even close to on the mark and remains so for the next four weeks you can be next to certain that the Democrats will blow the Republicans out in the House and very likely win back control of the Senate too.

[T]his is the core of the modern Republican Party. And they can only split the votes evenly with Democrats in this core group, election day will really be a disaster.

All of this also touches on a subject we discussed the other day: is this finally the year that working class, socially-conservative whites give up on the GOP? Given the Gallup numbers, it certainly sounds like it.

Of course, this swing happened before some of these same white frequent churchgoers learned (or, hopefully, at least heard) that the Republican elites consider religious right activists “ridiculous,” “out of control,” and “the nuts.”

If there’s ever been a time for these voters to give up on the GOP, it’s now.

“If there’s ever been a time for these voters to give up on the GOP, it’s now.” – CB

Actually, what we need and want is for them to give up on their “Leaders”, like Falwell, Dobson, Robertson et al. These “Nuts”, as Rove calls them, keep selling the True Christians’ and Theocratic Reactionaries’ votes to the Republican’ts in return for…

…what again?

Barack Obama and every good Democrat needs to walk past the “Nuts” and talk directly to this demographic, explain that we share Jesus’ belief in helping the poor, which is the first and last duty of a good Christian. And maybe, just maybe if we’d help the poor and educate the children, the number of unwanted pregnancies would go down in this country and thus the number of abortions.

The “Nuts” don’t want to end abortion in America, they just want to complain about it while bilking their flocks to lead a life of priviledge and influence.

  • As I commented yesterday, I feel some pity for Christian voters who are disgusted with Republicans and have to swallow their distaste for the Democratic social agenda in order to support a party with sane foreign or fiscal policies. The only consolation is that it’s likely the hardcore anti-abortion, anti-gay folks who are still with the GOP while the big shift comes from genuine fence-sitters.

    The only way to ensure that voters can choose exactly the party they want, and not the lesser of two evils, is to make third- and fourth-parties viable. Amazing that our market economy has allowed a duopoly in politics.

  • Maybe Christians don’t like torture after all.

    It does seem kind of odd that the Bush Administration has based so much of their policy on political considerations to placate or attract voting groups – yet they seem absolutely tone-deaf to how Americans in general and their church-going base in particular view torture as un-American.

    Is it possible that the turn-around in GOP fortunes since mid-September actually has more to do with the passage of the torture bill and less to do with Foley-gate (after all, when it comes to scandals, it is easily rationalized away as “they all do it”). It would be quite interesting if, in getting the torture bill passed that the White House won the battle if only to lose the war.

  • i fear what would happen to the demoractic party if “the nuts” come over in droves…
    I agree. It’s great if we can drive a wedge into the Republican base, but I certainly don’t want the Democrats to become the party of ignorant fundamentalists. The best outcome would be for the Falwell crowd to start up a far-right third party for the fundies, but that’s probably an unrealistic hope. In any event, I’ll lose no sleep over the political marginalization of the young earthers.

  • I don’t think the point is to bring wingers to the Dems– sorry, our big tent really isn’t *that* big– but to expose the GOP for the bullshit machine that it is. It’s up to the wingers what to do now, but personally I don’t know how they can support a party that thinks they are “nuts.”

    The only thing we could possibly do right now is remind all the sad, outraged wingers that they have a natural home in the Constitution Party– it’s God’s Own Party, all the way. They’re Christian, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-porn, basically they say everything the right-wingers want the GOP to say, only directly and bluntly.

  • If the Kuo book gets enough ink and electrons over the next few weeks, I’d expect that number to improve for them Dems. I suspect many of these are mainstream Catholics, such as those who thought Kerry was a “bad Catholic” for supporting abortion rights, and Protestants. But it would be a pleasant trend if a good number of these folks are Dobsonians, Falwellites and followers of other christian church leaders who have decided to follow their own moral compass in the voting booth and not let their church leader tell them what to do. Watching these cohesive blocks come unglued would be beneficial for American politics.

  • …explain that we share Jesus’ belief in helping the poor, which is the first and last duty of a good Christian.

    That’s going to be a tricky problem. The GOP could get away with mouthing self-serving religious platitudes because they had evangelical leaders on their side (as well as very active Christopath propaganda) doing the heavy selling. The Dems don’t have that kind of support, so any religious message on their part would be greeted with suspicion or contempt. The long-term problem with evangelicals comes down to their leaders and their state-of-the-art message machine. I suspect that this mass defection on the rank-and-file will get reined in soon enough, but perhaps not soon enough to change Congress over this fall. But we shouldn’t congratulate ourselves that the evangelicals have seen the light. There needs to be a structural solution–to change the evangelical wing of the Republican party back into a nonpolitical organization simply concerned with ministry and charity.

  • Having grown up in a household where Robertson, Dobson, Fallwell and Hinn were all held in the highest esteem at one time or another, I have come to the conclusion that this brand of religion is inherently political. Likewise, this brand of politics is inherently religious. There really is no distinction between politics and belief here.

    Do you really think 2 issues (homosexuality and abortion) are enough to sustain a religion’s commitment to a political party for all these years? For that matter, are these 2 issues enough to sustain a person’s commitment to a religion?

    When you peel away these 2 issues, you’ll find a really disgusting infestation of ignorance, self-righteousness, fear, xenophobia, and greed.

    But you can’t run on “send ’em back to Africa”, “kill abortion doctors”, “lock up gays”, “ignore the poor”, “nuke Hollywood”, or “force everyone to comply with my view of right and wrong”. Someone might get the idea that the movement is in fact, anti-Christ.

    Right-wing politics and its fascist tendencies are the religion. Abortion and gay marriage are just the tip of the iceberg that happen to be popular enough to drive a hidden and very repugnant agenda.

    The “Christians” are the driving force behind the moral apocalypse they’ve been warning everyone else about for millennia. The same irony plays out in the New Testament as the religious and political leaders conspire to silence, torture and kill the messenger of truth, tolerance, humility and self-sacrifice.

  • Very well stated JTK.

    I think that if the NRCC is paying attention to such polls we’ll just see more blatant “anti-” ads. (Democrats will force your son to marry Osama bin Laden!)

    People who base their voting habits on hate will never vote Democrat (unless the party returns to its Southern Scarycrat roots) in the same way folks who lean so far to the left they’re touching the right don’t vote Democrat. But if all the mixed nuts stay home on election day that’s just fine. I’d really like to see the fringes form their own parties. It would keep them busy and provide hours of (hopefully) harmless entertainment.

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