None of which is to say that Evangelicals aren’t still, by and large, “values voters.” But, as Galston points out, even among traditionalist Evangelicals, personal values (such as honesty and responsibility) and family values (such as trying to protect kids from sex and violence on TV and the Internet) rank higher in importance than social issues such as abortion and gay rights. This helps explain how, in 2004, foreign policy turned into a values issue for these voters, and why the character assaults on John Kerry were pivotal, especially for traditionalist Catholics, who swung toward Bush dramatically.
Galston and other experts believe that Bush’s trouncing of Kerry among Evangelicals (by 78 to 22 percent) almost certainly will prove a topping-out point for the GOP. “For a community as large and diverse as Evangelicals,” Pew Forum fellow John Green observes, “for somebody to get almost four-fifths of the vote, we’re pretty close to the theoretical maximum.” To Green’s way of thinking, that astronomical support has much to do with the “special relationship” Bush has with Evangelicals. “It is unlikely the Republicans will be able to repeat Bush’s success with these religious groups in the near future,” he says—and, indeed, Democrats took back a few percentage points in the 2006 elections from both Evangelicals and Catholics.
And what of 2008? On the GOP side, one of the persistent mysteries of the campaign so far is how on earth the party’s three leading candidates could be Giuliani, McCain, and Romney—not one of whom has convinced many religious voters that he is one of them. And it’s worth considering that the explanation has to do with the changing nature and priorities of the Evangelical electorate, and in particular with the waning of its most culturally extreme elements. Certainly we need some kind of avant-garde theory to cope with the anomaly of Giuliani, whose social-liberal record and, ahem, colorful private life should long ago have consigned him to the Falwellian dustbin for discarded pagans. But because of the sense that the fight against terrorism is the predominant issue of the age, religious voters seem remarkably open to him.
Equally intriguing are the possibilities on the Democratic side. After 2004, all manner of analyses asserted that the party was suffering from a “God gap.” In particular, there was the research that showed a precipitous decline in the percentage of Americans who regard the Democrats as friendly toward religion—from 42 percent in 2003 to 29 percent in 2005.
But the Democratic gains, however slight, among religious voters in 2006 suggest that the party may, just may, be closing the God gap—a very big deal, if true. In 2006, Democrats won 27 percent of the Evangelical vote across the country and even more in certain contests. “If the Democrats could win 35 percent,” says Green, “many races, even in the South, would become very competitive … In the big swing states of the Midwest, 35 percent … might guarantee a Democratic victory.”
This is why Galston, an architect of the New Democratic faith and a former Clinton White House official, has been pounding on the party to repair its irreligious image. And he is not alone. “Democrats finally got the message—2004 was a wake-up call,” he says, and it’s hard to deny the evidence thus far on the presidential hustings. Here you have Hillary Clinton, eschewing the language that describes abortion as a morally neutral medical procedure and arguing instead for an aggressive strategy to reduce its frequency. And there you have Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate most at ease in talking about the importance of his faith since … well, Bill Clinton.
No one should discount the inherent difficulties Democrats face in dealing with religion. Unlike Republicans, who because of the God-fearing composition of their electoral coalition can ignore nonreligious voters, Democrats must undertake a balancing act: reaching out to the devout without offending their secular base. But for the first time in a long time, hairline cracks seem to be appearing in the edifice of opposition they face from religious voters—just as Giuliani may be discovering that Evangelicals aren’t as monolithic a voting bloc as everyone has presumed. Here’s hoping these trends continue unabated, if for no other reason than that they’d cause Falwell to start spinning like a dervish in his grave.
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