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Bush wins churchgoers { November 4 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04309/406488.stmhttp://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04309/406488.stm
Analysis: Election shows voters split on cultural lines
Thursday, November 04, 2004
By Michael McGough, Post-Gazette National Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Even before the winner of Tuesday's presidential election was identified, exit polls told an interesting tale of how he got elected. The data showed that President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry drew their support from dramatically different segments of the electorate -- one might even say from different Americas.
Three-fourths of those who called themselves evangelical Christians voted for Bush. The president also got the votes of 79 percent of voters who ranked "moral values" as the most important issue. Among weekly churchgoers, Bush was preferred to Kerry 60 percent to 39 percent.
Now, visit Kerry's America.
The Democratic nominee was supported by 64 percent of those who never attend religious services and 53 percent of those who attend "occasionally." But Kerry bested Bush among voters who cited education as the most important issue (75 percent to 25 percent) and those who ranked health care first (78 percent to 22 percent).
This secular-religious distinction isn't the only fault line in Tuesday's results. Bush scored better than Kerry among men (54 percent to 45 percent) and among voters who ranked taxes and terrorism as the most important issue. Kerry did better than Bush among women (52 percent to 47 percent) and far better among African-Americans (89 percent to 11 percent).
Exit polls after the 2000 election showed similar divisions, but scholars who chronicle America's culture wars insist that Tuesday's voting patterns represent more than a rerun of 2000.
They cite two factors: the growing esteem in which President Bush is held even by politically moderate churchgoers and the arrival on the political landscape of the issue of same-sex marriage. On Tuesday, voters in 11 states opposed same-sex marriage in referendums.
"The exit polls show just how attractive Bush's religious rhetoric is," said David Domke, an associate professor of communication at the University of Washington. "There's no question but that religious voters moved away from Kerry. But they were moving toward someone who is a strategically religious person.
"Bush has a diverse religious coalition, whites and blacks, evangelical Protestants and even some Jews He also engages in a Clinton-like triangulation. Bill Clinton would position himself between the right-wing conservatives and the extreme left. Bush and his people are able to merge a religiously conservative world view with a strategic political agenda so that they don't come off as overly intolerant.
"The way Bush talked about gay marriage in the last debate with Kerry made him look compassionate. His language about the 'culture of life' is also attractive. People are fatigued by talk about abortion; that's why the 'culture of life' rhetoric works so well."
In Domke's view, Bush's opposition to gay marriage -- which he belatedly coupled with an endorsement of civil unions -- also endeared him to religiously minded voters, including African Americans.
Exit polls showed that Bush won 16 percent of the African-American vote in Ohio and 13 percent in Florida -- significant showings for a Republican, Domke said. "The African-American vote is the surprise story in this election. In Ohio 61 percent of African-Americans supported a ban on gay marriage," he said.
Stephen Monsma, a research fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Religion and Politics at Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, Mich., also believes Bush was helped by the gay-marriage issue.
"Gay marriage may be a situation where gay rights groups have overreached themselves," Monsma said. "It brought more people out to the polls and also had the effect of raising the visibility of 'value' issues.
"A lot of people who were quiescent about this issue said, 'This [same-sex marriage] is beyond the pale and we have to do something.' This raised their concern to a higher level."
In claiming victory yesterday, Bush said he sought "the broad support of all Americans," Given the polarization reflected not just in exit polls but in the narrowness of his victory margin, is that a reasonable expectation? Monsma thinks it is.
"It's easier to be a statesman the day after the election than when you're out there fighting tooth and nail to be elected," he said.
"I think Bush can reach out to people who didn't support him," he added. "Most of these social issues are presented as either/or propositions as if there is no common ground. Civil unions [for gays and lesbians] are an example of such common ground, and even on abortion the majority is not for abortion on demand, but neither are there that many Americans who want to ban all abortions. Both political parties are doing a disservice to the country by responding to their more extreme supporters."
Monsma's vision of a culture-wars convergence might seem Pollyanna-ish, but yesterday it received support from a surprising corner. The Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights organization, circulated an election analysis in which the group included two intriguing findings from exit polls.
The first was that 61 percent of voters supported some form of legal protection for same-sex couples (27 percent favored same-sex marriage, 35 percent favored civil unions). The other finding was that "fully half of the voters who said they support civil unions voted for George Bush."
From that, the Human Rights Campaign concluded that "caring about 'moral issues' does not mean opposition to gay equality."
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