Quantcast


Advertisement

The God Blog

Email | Print | Text - Text +

October 2, 2008 | 12:08 pm

Younger evangelicals less tied to McCain

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo

It’s sometimes frustrating as a reporter when you are interviewing political experts and strategists and they hedge on their election predictions. It’s also refreshing, because it seems like every day there is a new crumbling constituency whose potential for some of its members to vote for the party not traditionally their own could have dire consequences for Barack Obama or John McCain or Elisha Shapiro.

I’ve written plenty about Obama’s Jewish problem—too much really—and a little about McCain’s Jesus problem. On the latter, Religion News Service brings us up to speed:

While Sen. John McCain maintains a winning margin among white evangelical Christians of all ages, young white evangelical voters are less supportive of McCain than evangelical voters over the age of 30, according to the poll conducted for the PBS program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc.

McCain has the support of 71 percent of white evangelicals, but only 62 percent of white evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 29.

“Evangelical voters have been so solidly Republican in the last 20 years, so if this signals a shift, it could have wide-ranging political implications,” said Kim Lawton, the managing editor of “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”

Some differences on social issues also were highlighted in the survey. A majority of younger white evangelicals support some form of legal recognition for civil unions or marriage for same-sex couples. Older evangelicals are strongly opposed.

Both age groups remain solidly opposed to abortion.

This really wouldn’t be that surprising. The evangelical voting bloc is still struggling with losing Mike Huckabee in a Republican primary that featured a Mormon, a pro-life Catholic, McCain and no George Bush.

But there has been talk for over a year that evangelicals might vote Democrat, and still it seems like Obama couldn’t break the Republican hold on evangelical voters.

Not sure if anything has changed, or if this is the latest flavor-of-the-week survey.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

Share this post: del.icio.us Favicondel.icio.us Digg FaviconDigg Facebook FaviconFacebook Google FaviconGoogle Reddit FaviconReddit StumbleUpon FaviconStumbleUpon Technorati FaviconTechnorati YahooMyWeb FaviconYahooMyWeb

COMMENTS

We welcome your feedback. Comments may not exceed 700 characters.

Privacy Policy

Your information will not be shared or sold without your consent. Get all the details.

Terms of Service

JewishJournal.com has rules for its commenting community.Get all the details.

I am not sure that anyone but the most naive are wildly enthusiastic about any of our electoral choices in the face of the political and social challenges we are facing. Even the crackpots are right about something, and the best are wrong about something.

One comes to an equilibrium between degrees of support and degrees of opposition, and prioritizing the issues.

You say “A majority of younger white evangelicals support some form of legal recognition for civil unions or marriage for same-sex couples.” They are wrong of course, but overlooking that for now, if they have been convinced that this is a fair-minded concept, then maybe they do. But we are not talking about hurting anybody. But do you really think that the 99% of heterophilic voters are going to factor this into their decision? Especially those deriving from a community where same-sex is not kosher?

Comment by Ben Plonie on 10/02/08 at 5:25 pm

Post a Comment

Name:  
Email:  

Type the word you see below:

Comment:


About this Blog

Blog Home
About the Blogger(s)
Contact

RSS


Blog Archive






Newspaper

Serving a community of 600,000, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles is the largest Jewish weekly outside New York City. Our award-winning paper reaches over 150,000 educated, involved and affluent readers each week. Subscribe here.

© Copyright 2012 Tribe Media Corp.
All rights reserved. JewishJournal.com is hosted by Nexcess.net. Homepage design by Koret Communications.
Widgets by Mijits. Site construction by Hop Studios.

counter fake hit page