The God gap

According to this piece in the Washington Post, another result of the elections was that political operatives strategically narrowed the divide between religious voters and…certain political ideologies.

As the results of the midterm elections sank in this week, religious leaders across the ideological spectrum found something they could agree on: The “God gap” in American politics has narrowed substantially.

Religious liberals contended that a concerted effort by Democrats since 2004 to appeal to people of faith had worked minor wonders, if not electoral miracles, in races across the country.

Religious conservatives disagreed, arguing that the Republican Party lost religious voters rather than the Democrats winning them.

Either way, the national exit polls told a dramatic story of changing views in the pews: Democrats recaptured the Catholic vote they had lost two years ago…Democrats even siphoned off a portion of the Republican Party’s most loyal base, white evangelical Protestants.

“The God gap definitely didn’t disappear, but it did narrow. And it narrowed in part because evangelical voters had major questions about the direction of the country,” argued Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

We (they) need to get this right. The vote shift happened not because of the party designation after a candidate’s name so much, but because of the values that candidate represented. Republicanism lost, but conservatism won. That’s a distinction these pollsters and pundits better get straight if they want to understand what happened and why. The winning Democrats who put that party over the majority line last week were the “blue dogs” who represent strong conservative values.

The “God gap” didn’t narrow because of party identification but in spite of it. Because, although the Democrat platform represents liberal ideologies, and the Republican ‘big tent’ embraced conservative principles better last two times around, that has reversed in enough cases to cause this upheaval in Congress.

The views in the pews haven’t changed, which is why the candidates who best reflected those values and churchgoers tended to win. And they were mostly pro-life. That is the direction voters want our country to take.