ROSIN�S PREDICAMENT. Reading Hanna Rosin�s piece on the �God gap� in last month�s Atlantic, along with the transcript of a Pew-sponsored forum convened last December on the subject of religious voters and the 2006 election, one quickly realizes that the real problem on the religion-and-politics beat, post-2006, is not so much that the Democrats won, but how they won and the magnitude of their victories. In 2006, at least in terms of the religious splits, Democrats won because: (a.) the secular and/or infrequent church attendee vote expanded as a share of the electorate [and that�s not even accounting for respondent bias that surely leads people to lie about how frequently they attend church]; and (b.) Democratic support itself grew among that growing share of seculars. But the magnitude of the electoral victory was the real bell-ringer: Democrats netted 6 new governors, 6 new senators, 30 new house members, and flipped 10 new legislative chambers -- a secular-led victory of far greater magnitude than we saw in the evangelical-driven Republican "triumph" of 2004 (i.e., zero net new governors, just 4 net new senators and 3 House members, and a net loss of state chambers). Seeing the election-night results first, one imagines folks like Rosin and the Key West conferees rushing to the 2006 exit polls, certain there would be this giant surge in evangelical support for Democrats. They had spent so much time diligently learning the language and behaviors of the vaunted evangelical voters, they just had to be pivotal. But then, like the three-day-old, half-deflated balloon in the corner that never popped, there it was: a measly, 3-point bump for Democrats -- an "increase" that, because it fell within the polling margin of error, cannot with statistical confidence even be called an increase. �Given how well Democrats did in the midterm elections, it�s surprising how little they narrowed what is melodically called the �God gap� -- the overwhelming Republican advantage among religious voters,� Rosin opens her piece. Surprising, sure, unless you've noticed that, according to the American Religious Identification Survey, the national share of agnostics/atheists/non-demonationals was 8% in 1990, rose to 14% by 2001, and probably approaches 16% today -- doubling, therefore, in just a decade and a half. Predictably, Rosin goes "deeper" to look at specific races, like Ted Strickland's big victory in the Ohio gubernatorial race. I�d argue that focusing on this race was a bad choice: Strickland�s margin was so wide he would still have won without a surge among the religious. (Notice how the emphasis is always on Strickland's preacher background whereas the inconvenient fact that Ken Blackwell was, arguably, the most overtly religious right Republican candidate in the country in 2006, at any level, is quickly glossed over.)
One could argue that the Blackwell-Strickland results prove that evangelicals are bolting the GOP. Alternatively, one could argue that evangelicals are decreasingly pivotal precisely because the secular voting share is growing. Unspoken media norms prevent arguing the latter, however. And, alas, the 2006 exit polls prevent arguing the former. Therein we find Rosin�s predicament.
--Tom Schaller
