Chicago Tribune: Obama Picks up Religious Votes |
Site last published: 01/06/10
Chicago Tribune: Obama Picks up Religious Votes
November 06,2008
Margaret Ramirez and Manya A. Brachear
With his Christian faith playing a key part in his personal life and campaign, President-elect Barack Obama emerged victorious by winning the Catholic vote and making slight gains among white evangelicals.
Early exit polls found that Obama took 54 percent of the Catholic vote, while Republican John McCain captured 45 percent. That outcome was a reversal from the 2004 election, when George W. Bush won the Catholic vote with 52 percent compared to John Kerry's 46 percent.
Obama's win among Catholics came despite an aggressive push by some of the nation's bishops to encourage the faithful to make abortion their main issue. The abortion debate intensified when Catholic legal scholars Douglas Kmiec and Nicholas Cafardi announced their support of Obama, who supports keeping abortion legal, and urged Catholics to consider the full agenda of Catholic social teaching.
Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote a letter of congratulations to Obama and offered prayers for strength and wisdom to meet the nation's challenges.
"Our country is confronting many uncertainties," George wrote. "We pray that you will use the powers of your office to meet them with a special concern to defend the most vulnerable among us and heal the divisions in our country and our world. We stand ready to work with you in defense and support of the life and dignity of every human person."
White evangelicals, who traditionally vote Republican, showed strong support for McCain. But Obama scored surprising gains in that group by picking up 26 percent of white evangelical voters, compared with 21 percent of Kerry voters in 2004.
Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said that shift reflects a broader evangelical agenda beyond fighting abortion and same-sex marriage to other issues, including global warming and poverty. "Our strategy ... says we are in this together, whether it's the air we breathe or the food we eat," Cizik said. "We're well-positioned in this new environment with President-elect Barack Obama to stay in the game."
Another surprising conclusion to emerge from Obama's win was how he narrowed the so-called God gap, capturing worshipers who attend church frequently. Obama increased his share among all church-attendance groups, but he made his greatest gains among voters who attend church more than once a week. Some 43 percent of the frequent churchgoers supported Obama, up from the 35 percent who voted for Kerry.
John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life said: "[Obama] had very special appeal to a wide variety of groups because of their race, ethnicity, immigrant status. He embodies in his own life and biography something very appealing to those groups."
With his Christian faith playing a key part in his personal life and campaign, President-elect Barack Obama emerged victorious by winning the Catholic vote and making slight gains among white evangelicals.
Early exit polls found that Obama took 54 percent of the Catholic vote, while Republican John McCain captured 45 percent. That outcome was a reversal from the 2004 election, when George W. Bush won the Catholic vote with 52 percent compared to John Kerry's 46 percent.
Obama's win among Catholics came despite an aggressive push by some of the nation's bishops to encourage the faithful to make abortion their main issue. The abortion debate intensified when Catholic legal scholars Douglas Kmiec and Nicholas Cafardi announced their support of Obama, who supports keeping abortion legal, and urged Catholics to consider the full agenda of Catholic social teaching.
Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote a letter of congratulations to Obama and offered prayers for strength and wisdom to meet the nation's challenges.
"Our country is confronting many uncertainties," George wrote. "We pray that you will use the powers of your office to meet them with a special concern to defend the most vulnerable among us and heal the divisions in our country and our world. We stand ready to work with you in defense and support of the life and dignity of every human person."
White evangelicals, who traditionally vote Republican, showed strong support for McCain. But Obama scored surprising gains in that group by picking up 26 percent of white evangelical voters, compared with 21 percent of Kerry voters in 2004.
Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said that shift reflects a broader evangelical agenda beyond fighting abortion and same-sex marriage to other issues, including global warming and poverty. "Our strategy ... says we are in this together, whether it's the air we breathe or the food we eat," Cizik said. "We're well-positioned in this new environment with President-elect Barack Obama to stay in the game."
Another surprising conclusion to emerge from Obama's win was how he narrowed the so-called God gap, capturing worshipers who attend church frequently. Obama increased his share among all church-attendance groups, but he made his greatest gains among voters who attend church more than once a week. Some 43 percent of the frequent churchgoers supported Obama, up from the 35 percent who voted for Kerry.
John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life said: "[Obama] had very special appeal to a wide variety of groups because of their race, ethnicity, immigrant status. He embodies in his own life and biography something very appealing to those groups."