Religious Influences in the 2004 Presidential Election

Religious Influences in the 2004 Presidential Election JAMES L. GUTH Furman University LYMAN A. KELLSTEDT Wheaton College CORWIN E. SMIDT Calvin College JOHN C. GREEN Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and University of Akron

In this article, we examine the impact of religious variables on the vote in the 2004 presidential election. First, we review and evaluate two theories that underlie many interpretations of religion’s role in American electoral politics, namely, the ethnoreligious and the religious restructuring perspectives. Using both approaches, we deploy a comprehensive classification incorporating religious affiliations, beliefs, and practices that is quite successful in capturing the electoral impact of religion. We show that religious groups exhibited distinctive political priorities, attitudes toward the role of religion in the election, stands on critical campaign issues, and evaluations of President Bush’s performance in office. We find that some religious factors had an important role in the Republican victory, especially in the so-called battleground states. Finally, we discuss some substantive implications of the findings for understanding public policies and policy making.

James L. Guth is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science at Furman University. He has written extensively on the role of religion in American and European politics. Lyman A. Kellstedt is professor emeritus of political science at Wheaton College and the author of many works on religion and political behavior. Corwin E. Smidt holds the Paul B. Henry Chair in Christianity and Politics and serves as executive director of the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College. He is the author or editor of several books on religion and politics. John C. Green is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. He has written extensively on religion and politics, political parties, and campaign finance. Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, no. 2 (June) © 2006 Center for the Study of the Presidency

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Following the 2004 presidential election, journalists and pundits seized upon religion and public concerns about moral values to explain President George W. Bush’s victory. While much of this “Wednesday morning” analysis oversimplified the issues influencing the vote, there is no doubt that religion played an important role in the outcome. As one early political science analysis put it, Bush “showed himself willing to use religion forcefully to sharpen partisan divisions and highlight his own qualities as a leader,” while John F. Kerry and the Democrats “faced obstacles in using religious rhetoric, in appealing to religion to underscore his qualities as a leader, and in benefiting from the political organization of religious groups.” Religion, this analysis concluded, “was at the heart of the campaign” (Muirhead et al. 2005, 222). Both candidates had a “religious strategy,” but Bush’s was well developed and consistent while Kerry’s was reactive and erratic. Chastened by losing the popular vote in 2000, Bush and GOP political strategist Karl Rove pursued a comprehensive approach to mobilizing religious traditionalists, especially Evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics, into the Republican camp. Bush’s policies on controversial social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and stem cell research were shaped with an eye toward attracting their support. In addition, his nominations to executive and judicial posts recognized these religious groups to an extent greater than previous chief executives had. Furthermore, as a devout Methodist, Bush presented himself as part of the conservative religious community, using religious rhetoric and themes to an extent arguably unparalleled for any modern president, especially after the events of September 11, 2001. Finally, Bush and Republican campaign officials cultivated conservative religious leaders and sought to link their communities with the GOP electoral machine (Guth 2004). Senator Kerry, on the other hand, failed to find an effective approach to America’s religious communities during the campaign. Although a practicing Catholic, Kerry nevertheless found it difficult to discuss matters of personal faith, which he considered fundamentally a private matter. Such expression was complicated by the vocal criticism he faced from some Catholic bishops for his pro-choice stance on abortion, preventing him from attending Mass in several dioceses while campaigning and keeping him on the defensive in dealing with religious issues. Kerry eventually began to connect publicly his liberal Catholic faith to Democratic policies advancing social justice and spent considerable time in religious venues, especially black Protestant churches, often quoting scripture in the process, but these efforts often seemed strained. Similarly, the Kerry-Edwards campaign managed to activate some religious liberals from Mainline Protestant and Catholic bodies, and along with the Democratic party, sought institutionalized links with liberal religious groups and leaders. But these efforts met with varied and repeated frustrations, failing to accommodate the diverse array of religious and secular groups constituting the party’s contemporary activist corps (Vinson and Guth, forthcoming). To analyze the impact of religion on the 2004 presidential election, we use two perspectives on the contemporary political shape of American religion, the ethnoreligious and religious restructuring perspectives, to produce a single, combined classification of religious voters. We find that Bush and Kerry attracted very different constituencies. Bush drew on Evangelicals and other religious traditionalists from Mainline Protestant and

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Catholic communities, while Kerry’s coalition was based on secular voters, religious minorities, and modernists from Mainline and Catholic churches. We also show that the religious groups in each coalition held distinctive views on national priorities, on the role that religion should play in politics, and on salient issues, such as the Iraq War, abortion, same-sex marriage, and tax cuts. Finally, we demonstrate that attitudes toward the Iraq War were the most powerful predictor of the presidential vote, but that conservative stances on social issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, also worked in the president’s favor, especially in the critical battleground states.

The Ethnoreligious and Religious Restructuring Perspectives Pollsters and commentators have long relied implicitly on what we call an ethnoreligious interpretation of American politics. This perspective identifies the key religious groups as the historic denominations born in Europe and later multiplying on America’s shores. Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and a myriad other Protestant groups combined distinct religious worldviews with other cultural attributes, such as ethnicity, race, or regional location. These Protestants later coalesced into two distinct traditions, the Evangelical and Mainline, and were joined by a host of other traditions, including Catholics, Jews, Eastern Orthodox, and other religious “minorities.” All these groups developed their own political cultures—often in conflict with neighboring religious groups—that were fostered by religious leaders, houses of worship, and ethnic neighborhoods and activated by party leaders. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, indeed, American party politics involved competing alliances of ethnoreligious groups (Jensen 1971; Kleppner 1979).1 And although such groups multiplied (Eck 2001) and sometimes changed their alignments in the past few decades, observers still talk of the “Evangelical,” “Catholic,” “Jewish,” or, now, the “Muslim” vote. In recent years, some sociologists have challenged the continuing utility of the ethnoreligious perspective, as the ascriptive nature of religious affiliation breaks down and Americans move freely among religious settings, ignoring old ties of doctrine, denomination, ethnicity, region, and even family (Ammerman 1997). Nevertheless, we think location in the historic Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, and Catholic traditions still matters, precisely because such membership is now freely chosen, as believers seek a congenial religious environment (Green and Guth 1993). And for many “new” religious communities, such as Hispanic Catholics, the tight religious, ethnic, and family bonds that once characterized “old” ethnoreligious groups such as Irish Catholics may still be operative (Stevens 2004). Thus, the ethnoreligious perspective may still identify vital aspects of American religion. Nevertheless, a new “religious restructuring” formulation has intrigued politicians, pollsters, and scholars. Its central tenet is that American religion has been divided into factions holding two opposing worldviews, fostered by competing religious institutions 1. We prefer “ethnoreligious” to the “ethnocultural” label used by most historians (McCormick 1974) to keep our focus on the religious aspect of this interpretation of American electoral politics.

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and leaders. As Robert Wuthnow (1988) and James Davison Hunter (1991) have argued, major religious traditions have been polarized by theological, social, and cultural conflicts into a “conservative” or “orthodox” faction on one side, and a “liberal” or “progressive” one on the other. And for some theorists, the rising number of secular citizens is a natural extension of the “liberal” side—and perhaps even the product of struggles over restructuring (Hout and Fischer 2002). Wuthnow saw this polarization primarily as destructive of religious institutions, but Hunter’s apocalyptic title, Culture Wars, projected the divisions into the polity, as a threat to social stability. Although scholarly reaction to the “culture wars” notion has focused on those purported political manifestations (Williams 1997; Fiorina, with Abrams and Pope 2005), Wuthnow’s and Hunter’s original formulations were rooted in religious developments, especially the emergence of opposing worldviews. As both authors pointed out, the competing camps are characterized by alternate religious belief systems, different forms of religious observance, and adherence to rival movements within their institutions. Indeed, identification of these rival forces constitutes the most valuable insight of this perspective. Scholars employ various names for the resulting factions, but we will use “traditionalist” and “modernist.” Although critics are rightly skeptical about extreme statements of the restructuring theory, evidence for a milder version is convincing, especially in “old-line” American religious institutions. Perusal of the religious press reveals continual battles between traditionalists and modernists in almost every major Protestant denomination, as well as in the American Catholic Church. Although rooted in theology and practice, these struggles also produce opposing moral, social, economic, and political perspectives. True, culture war theorists consistently overstate the consequent polarization, both within religious bodies and the mass public: there are “centrists” in the religious wars, and “moderates” in the political culture wars. But the divisions they identify may influence electoral politics, if only because they shape cues presented to the public by religious and political elites (Guth et al. 1997; Fiorina, with Abrams and Pope 2005). To summarize our argument: we think that both perspectives are critical to understanding presidential politics (cf. Layman 2001, 55). Unfortunately, questions commonly used in most electoral research tap only one aspect of contemporary American religion, either the ethnoreligious (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Something Else, None) or the restructuring perspective (church-goers versus non-church-goers, fundamentalists versus liberals) and not always very well or with any attention to theoretical rationale. Analyzing the influence of ethnoreligious factors requires detailed religious affiliation measures and identifying restructuring factions requires items on religious beliefs, behaviors, and identification with religious movements. Fortunately, we have data available that suit those purposes.

Data and Methods We use the Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics, conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Akron, and cosponsored by the Pew Forum


on Religion and Public Life.2 This survey has several advantages for the study of religion and electoral alignments. First, a large sample allows us to examine religious subgroups with considerable statistical confidence. This study initially polled a random sample of 4,000 adults between February and April 2004; after the fall election we reinterviewed 2,730 respondents. Second, the survey employs detailed affiliation probes for accurate classification of respondents into religious traditions (Kellstedt and Green 1993; Green et al. 1996) and also uses belief, behavior, and movement questions, integral to the restructuring approach. For purposes of analysis and exposition, we have classified respondents into their specific religious traditions, including not only the major historic traditions such as Evangelical, Mainline, and black Protestants; white Roman Catholics;3 and Jews, but also Hispanic Protestants and Catholics, “All Other Religions” (mostly non-Christian), and the growing number of religiously unattached citizens (“seculars”). We have also used belief, behavior, and religious movement questions to create a measure of “traditionalism-modernism” across the sample. For easy presentation, we have split this score into thirds and assigned members of the three largest Christian traditions (Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, and white Catholics) to “traditionalist,” “centrist,” and “modernist” camps.4 To characterize each faction briefly, traditionalists adhere to orthodox beliefs, participate frequently in normative religious behaviors, and want their religious institutions to adhere to traditional beliefs and practices. Modernists, on the other side, reject orthodox beliefs and embrace new religious ideas, participate less frequently in normative religious behaviors, and hope their religious communities will adopt beliefs and practices consistent with modern ideas. Centrists, naturally, fall in the middle: they hold moderately orthodox beliefs, are somewhat active religiously, but tend not to identify with religious movements on either side. Although often neglected in discussions of restructuring, because of their numbers and position, centrists are a critical religious and political group.5 For both practical and theoretical reasons, our tables do not report traditionalistmodernist divisions among Hispanic Protestants and Catholics, Jews, black Protestants, or the other categories. First, the numbers are often too small to subdivide with great confidence. And ethnoreligious theory also suggests that such traditions are still shaped more by racial, ethnic, or religious solidarity than by religious restructuring. Nevertheless, the traditionalist-modernist division may be encroaching here as well. In 2004, for example, traditionalists in all these groups were at least somewhat more likely to vote 2. Additional support for the post-election part of the survey was provided by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Endowment at Furman University. 3. This group includes all Catholics, except for Hispanics and blacks. 4. To classify respondents in the appropriate religious community, we first asked detailed affiliation measures in order to place them in the correct religious tradition. Then we used batteries of belief, behavior, and movement identification measures to produce the threefold classification used here. For much more detail on the specific procedures, see Guth et al. (2005a). 5. Our equally sized tripartite divisions are somewhat arbitrary, but alternative cutting points produce very similar substantive results. For the purpose of exposition, the three groups illustrate vividly the political differences based in the traditionalism-modernism dimension. For multivariate analysis, of course, we can use the original factor score, if so desired, as a more differentiated measure.

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for President Bush than their centrist or modernist counterparts (see below). If this trend continues, religious restructuring may increasingly shape the politics of these smaller ethnoreligious traditions.

Religious Groups and Electoral Choice in 2004 We think that our religious classification comports well with the realities of American religion, reducing its complexities to meaningful categories (Steinfels 2004). But does it help account for political behavior? Table 1 reports the following data for each religious group in 2004: (1) the proportion of the potential electorate; (2) the twoparty vote for Bush; and (3) the two-party vote for Republicans in House races. Although the religious landscape confronting presidential candidates is quite complex, several historic religious communities still account for substantial blocs of potential voters. As the table shows, the Evangelical tradition is the largest, constituting one quarter of the adult population and an obvious target for GOP candidates in recent years. On the other hand, the Mainline Protestant tradition, historically dominant in the GOP and still overrepresented among American political elites, has declined to only about one sixth the potential electorate, roughly the same proportion contributed TABLE 1 Religious Groups and Electoral Choice in the 2004 Election Religious Group Latter-day Saints Evangelical Protestant Traditionalist Centrist Modernist Hispanic Protestant Mainline Protestant Traditionalist Centrist Modernist White Catholic Traditionalist Centrist Modernist Hispanic Catholic Secular Jewish All others Black Protestant Total (N)

Proportion of Potential Voters (%)

Bush Percent of Two-Party Vote

GOP Percent of Two-Party House Vote

1.8 [25.1] 17.2 6.1 1.8 2.6 [16.4] 3.7 7.8 4.9 [17.3] 3.6 8.0 5.7 4.5 17.3 1.9 3.9 9.3

97.0 [77.5] 86.3 56.8 48.4 62.9 [50.0] 68.7 53.8 29.5 [53.5] 81.3 56.4 27.1 31.4 28.1 26.7 22.4 17.2

90.0 [74.9] 81.9 54.1 62.5 61.9 [53.8] 60.9 61.4 38.3 [53.3] 78.7 56.6 29.3 22.2 29.9 26.8 16.7 19.6

100.0 (2,730)

51.2

Source: 2004 Religion and Politics Post-Election Survey, University of Akron.

51.2 (1,645)


by European-origin Catholics and secular citizens. Black Protestants number about one tenth of potential voters, while Hispanic Catholics and Protestants are considerably less numerous, but growing in numbers and potential electoral significance. Jews and All Other Religions are less numerous but may bulk larger in some of the battleground states, critical to the Electoral College vote. How did America’s religious groups react to the campaign? Consider first the electoral choices of the individual religious traditions: the range of vote choice is breathtaking. Latter-day Saints almost unanimously chose the Republican ticket, while less than one fifth of black Protestants did. Not surprisingly, Evangelical Protestants gave three fourths of their votes to the GOP, white Catholics (historically stalwart Democrats) gave the Republicans a narrow majority, but Mainline Protestants (once the religious bulwark of the GOP) were split down the middle in the presidential race and gave GOP House candidates a bare majority. The table also reveals a fact often missed in recent discussion of the Hispanic vote: President Bush’s gain there came largely from Protestants, not from Catholics, who remained Democratic in overwhelming numbers (cf. Leal et al. 2005). Jews and the mostly non-Christian All Other Religions category were also heavily Democratic, as were secular voters, who gave Kerry over 70 percent. Many religious traditions are clearly still quite distinct politically: Evangelicals have become the religious mainstay of the GOP, white Catholics have edged away from their ancient Democratic ties (Prendergast 1999) toward a slight GOP bias, and Mainline Protestants were even more a “swing vote” than Catholics in 2004. At the same time, Democrats have kept their hold on most religious minorities, especially black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, Jews, and non-Christians. They have also established a strong link to the growing coterie of unaffiliated voters, perhaps building a large constituency of “secular warriors” (Greenberg 2005, 128-30). Careful sorting of religious voters into the proper tradition clearly helps us understand contemporary electoral choices. But our grasp is further improved if we look at traditionalist-modernist divisions within the three major religious traditions (Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, and white Catholics), traditions that account for almost two thirds of all voters. In all three, traditionalists are far more prone to vote Republican than their modernist co-parishioners. The differences range from a “modest” 38 percent among Evangelicals to over 54 percent among white Catholics. Thus, the rival religious factions identified by restructuring theorists certainly had a powerful influence on the 2004 vote. Restructuring may even be having an impact on “minority” traditions. A closer look at Hispanic Protestants—a rapidly growing group—shows that Bush carried handily the traditionalists in this largely traditionalist group, but his success among comparable Hispanic Catholics was not as far advanced. Among Hispanic Protestants, Bush carried 78 percent of traditionalists but only 14 percent of the much smaller coterie of centrists and modernists; among Hispanic Catholics the comparable figures are 59 and 21 percent, respectively, with many more Catholics in the centrist and modernist categories. Similarly, traditionalist Jews (mostly Orthodox) were also more Republican, but were far outnumbered by the modernists (mostly Reform), who gave Kerry almost 90 percent. These tendencies appear even among religiously unaffiliated voters: the more

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“residually religious” the unaffiliated voter is, the more Republican: for example, “unaffiliated believers” gave 34 percent to Bush, but agnostics and atheists provided only 18 percent. Even among black Protestants, Bush did a bit better among traditionalists (data not shown).

Religious Groups and Party Coalitions To this point, we have described the electoral preferences of America’s diverse religious population. Now we look at the data from a slightly different angle, examining the religious makeup of the Republican and Democratic electoral coalitions. Understanding that composition is vital both for evaluating the acumen of campaign managers and also for explaining the post-election behavior of public officials, as they respond to crucial voting blocs within their party or, perhaps, try to attract religious voters usually drawn to their opponents. The contribution that a group makes to a party’s electoral coalition is determined by three factors: the size of the group in the electorate, its turnout rate, and the proportion of the vote that it gives to that party (Axelrod 1972; Leege et al. 2002, 23136). We previously noted the proportion of the potential electorate represented by each religious group and include that information in Table 2 as a reminder. The turnout rates of the three largest traditions vary, with Mainline Protestants still having a slight advantage over white Catholics and a somewhat larger edge over Evangelicals.6 Among smaller groups, Jews have a very high turnout, with the Latter-day Saints also well above the national average. But black and Hispanic Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, All Other Religions, and secular voters trail the national average, an obvious disadvantage for the Democrats in the 2004 (and other) national elections. Within the major religious traditions, turnout also varies along the traditionalismmodernism dimension. Among Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, and white Catholics alike, it was highest among traditionalists, and in the Protestant traditions, next highest among modernists. For white Catholics, turnout by centrists and modernists was approximately equal, but far behind that of the smaller traditionalist cohort. On the whole, then, the 2004 campaign clearly stimulated greater voting by traditionalists. Indeed, across the whole sample their turnout exceeded 67 percent, compared to 55 percent for centrists and 59 percent for modernists. Whether this reflected the tendency for regular church attendees to vote more frequently, stimulation provided by election year “moral” issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage, more effective mobilization through religious or secular channels, or some combination of these, remains a subject for later analysis. In any case, the two parties have very distinct religious profiles. As the last two columns in Table 2 show, almost two fifths of the Bush vote came from Evangelicals

6. Like all voting studies, our survey is characterized by over-reporting of turnout by respondents. We have used a statistical routine to correct for this tendency. For further information, contact the authors.

Guth et al. / 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION | 231 TABLE 2 Religious Groups, Turnout, and the Republican and Democratic Electoral Coalitions in 2004

Religious Group Latter-day Saints Evangelical Protestant Traditionalist Centrist Modernist Hispanic Protestant Mainline Protestant Traditionalist Centrist Modernist White Catholic Traditionalist Centrist Modernist Hispanic Catholic Secular Jewish All others Black Protestant Total (N)

Proportion of Potential Voters (%)

Turnout Rate (%)

Percent of GOP Electoral Coalition

Percent of Democratic Electoral Coalition

1.8 [25.1] 17.2 6.1 1.8 2.6 [16.4] 3.7 7.8 4.9 [17.3] 3.6 8.0 5.7 4.5 17.3 1.9 3.9 9.3

70.8 [63.2] 66.8 53.3 61.2 49.3 [69.2] 81.6 62.0 71.4 [67.0] 79.4 64.5 63.2 43.1 52.4 86.5 55.1 50.4

3.8 [39.8] 32.1 5.9 1.8 2.6 [18.4] 6.8 8.4 3.3 [19.8] 7.2 9.4 3.1 1.9 8.1 1.4 1.5 2.6

0.1 [12.1] 5.4 4.7 2.0 1.6 [19.1] 3.2 7.6 8.3 [18.0] 1.7 7.6 8.7 4.4 21.7 4.1 5.6 13.2

100.0 (2,730)

60.8

100.0

100.0


alone, rising to four fifths when Mainline Protestants and white Catholics are added. In contrast, less than one half of the Kerry vote came from these three large religious traditions. The major elements in the Democratic coalition were secular voters (almost 22 percent); all other religious minorities, such as Jews, Hispanic Catholics and Protestants, and All Other Religions (about 16 percent); and black Protestants (over 13 percent), for a slight majority of the total. Note, especially, that in 2004, secular voters contributed a larger proportion of the Democratic ballots than did white Catholics, certainly a historic development. Another way of looking at the coalitions is to consider the contribution of traditionalists and modernists. Almost one third of Bush’s vote came from Evangelical traditionalists alone. Adding their Mainline and Catholic counterparts (totaling to 14 percent), Latter-day Saints (3.8 percent), and Hispanic Protestants (2.6 percent) produces a traditionalist majority in the GOP electorate. In addition, another one quarter of the Republican vote came from centrists in the three major traditions. The Democratic coalition, on the other hand, had a “secular-religious minority” majority, bolstered by modernists (19 percent) and centrists (almost 20 percent) from the three largest traditions.

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Religious Groups and Campaign Issues Presumably these substantial differences in voting among religious groups reflect some fundamental divergences in attitudes held by their members on the salient issues of the 2004 campaign. To investigate this possibility, we first look at citizens’ views on the much-debated question of moral values that became a feature of post-election analysis. Do the religious coalitions portrayed above reflect the special prominence of such issues? Then we turn to the role of religion in the political process. Did Bush’s open use of religious rhetoric and adoption of policies favored by conservative religious groups give the GOP an advantage in cultivating religious voters? Did Kerry’s more diffident and difficult religious strategy appeal to fewer? Finally, we look at several important political issues. Do religious coalitions reflect differing postures on moral issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage? Or do religious groups exhibit greater “attitudinal constraint” across issue domains, responding in similar ways to social, foreign-policy, and economic issues? Finally, how far can these issue preferences take us in explaining the outcome of the 2004 presidential contest? Do religious groups exhibit different priorities in making their electoral choices? Table 3 suggests that they do. After asking voters how important economic, foreignpolicy, and social issues were to their vote (see Appendix for question wording), we inquired as to which was “most important.” Although a few voters refused to choose a single issue type, most were willing to do so. Our results did not differ much from those reported by the exit polls. The plurality of voters (about 35 percent) chose foreign-policy issues as most important, followed closely by economic issues at about one third. Just under one quarter named social issues, “such as abortion and same-sex marriage,” as most critical, a result almost identical to the much-critiqued exit poll item on “moral values,” although our question specified much better what we meant by “social issues” (see Appendix for wording). Whatever the overall results, the findings vary greatly by religious community. Latter-day Saints and religious traditionalists, especially among Evangelicals and Catholics, were more prone to choose social issues than either other type, centrists tended to divide their concerns between foreign policy and economics, while modernists usually focused more on foreign policy. Black Protestants and both Hispanic groups reported an economic basis for their vote, while Jews, seculars, and All Other Religions had a plurality reporting that foreign-policy considerations were most important. Obviously, different things mattered to different religious voters, sometimes even within the same religious traditions. Religious groups also differed in their preferences on the role of religion in the political process. Table 3 reports the extent to which religious groups favored religious traits in candidates and campaigns, what we might call “civic religion” (see Appendix for question wording). Note first that two thirds of the public agreed that it was important for the president to have strong religious beliefs. Slightly fewer felt comfortable with candidates discussing their faith during the campaign. And about two thirds thought that the 2004 presidential campaign had exhibited either the right amount of

Guth et al. / 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION | 233 TABLE 3 Religious Groups, Priorities, and Civic Religion in the 2004 Presidential Election Most Important Issue to Vote

Civic Religion Orientation

Social Issues

Foreign Policy

Economics

Need President with Strong Religious Beliefs

Comfortable with Candidates Talking Religion

Right Amount of Religious Talk in Campaign

Importance of Religion to Political Thinking

Faith Important to Voting Decision

Total

23.8

34.9

32.7

67.6

62.1

66.7

38.8

44.7

Latter-day Saints Evangelical Traditionalist Centrist Modernist Hispanic Protestant Mainline Traditionalist Centrist Modernist White Catholic Traditionalist Centrist Modernist Hispanic Catholic Secular Jewish All others Black Protestant

46.5

27.9

16.3

82.1

77.0

81.3

57.6

65.0

44.3 17.4 27.8 34.0

29.1 33.9 36.1 12.0

17.2 39.1 27.8 42.0

94.9 84.3 54.1 83.6

83.8 67.0 45.2 74.5

86.0 77.0 55.1 70.0

75.9 31.8 8.9 48.0

83.1 45.1 23.4 66.1

30.1 16.2 13.0

25.8 41.3 41.7

31.2 34.1 35.2

93.5 76.0 37.4

80.6 67.1 45.2

79.4 66.8 46.6

64.3 30.3 8.1

68.3 32.6 20.2

45.3 12.8 10.4 21.4 16.8 8.3 15.3 17.2

25.6 41.7 48.1 27.4 44.9 50.0 48.6 14.6

23.3 36.9 36.3 44.0 31.9 29.2 26.4 58.9

94.3 73.7 42.7 72.3 29.1 25.3 54.4 83.6

76.0 69.1 49.3 50.0 38.9 32.1 45.8 69.8

80.4 76.5 53.5 75.6 45.0 42.3 40.7 74.9

56.2 27.5 8.8 36.7 13.4 40.9 32.3 51.5

77.9 38.0 12.1 35.3 20.2 27.9 27.8 54.2


religious discussion—or too little.7 Although large majorities of voters apparently found the religious atmosphere in the 2004 election acceptable or even desirable, religion was less often cited as a force shaping personal political decisions. Slightly under two fifths said that religion strongly influenced their political thinking, but somewhat more reported that religion was either the most important factor in determining their vote, or as important as any other single factor. Although the data on religious groups reveal many nuances, the pattern is clear: the groups that voted for Bush also approved of a strong role for religion in the process and report that it played a vital role in their decision. Religious traditionalists in all communities scored quite high on all five civic religion indicators, followed by centrists. As we might expect, Jews, All Other Religions, and seculars joined modernists from all three major traditions in wanting less religion from the president and the campaign and in reporting that religion played a minor role at best in their own political choices. Note, however, that black Protestants, Hispanic Protestants, and Hispanic Catholics differed from other religious minorities in this respect. Inspection shows that the traditionalists 7. As other poll data show, these orientations tended to favor Bush, as he was generally perceived as having stronger and better articulated religious beliefs.

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among them (the very voters more prone to vote for Bush) are also likely to dissent from the “Democratic party” consensus on such issues (data not shown). What about specific issues? How did religious groups view some of the fundamental questions of the 2004 campaign? Although the survey had many policy items, we focus on five that were especially prominent in 2004 and capture the important dimensions of voter concern: the Iraq War, abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, and tax cuts. We also consider respondents’ assessment of George W. Bush’s job performance on social, foreign-policy, and economic issues. As Table 4 shows, at the time of our spring survey, a narrow majority of respondents thought that the Iraq War was justified and supported traditional marriage over civil unions or same-sex marriage. The public was more closely divided on abortion and the benefits of large tax cuts, but opposed a ban on stem cell research, although there were far more “undecideds” on this issue than on the others. In rating George W. Bush’s job performance, over 40 percent gave him “excellent” or “good” ratings on foreign policy, slightly fewer did so on social issues, and less than a third awarded him high marks on economic management. Once again, we see the same general pattern emerging among religious groups— a pattern that transcends issue domains. Generally, Latter-day Saints and religious tra-

TABLE 4 Religious Groups, Issues, and Presidential Evaluations in the 2004 Presidential Election Issue Positions Iraq War Justified

Traditional Pro-Life Marriage

Bush Evaluations Ban Stem Cell Research

Favor Large Tax Cuts

Social Issues

Foreign Policy

Economic Issues

Total

58.5

46.3

53.6

30.1

47.3

38.8

40.6

31.6

Latter-day Saints Evangelical Traditionalist Centrist Modernist Hispanic Protestant Mainline Traditionalist Centrist Modernist White Catholic Traditionalist Centrist Modernist Hispanic Catholic Secular Jewish All others Black Protestant

87.5

68.8

79.2

41.9

65.4

75.0

68.8

60.4

82.4 71.5 49.0 74.3

81.1 56.7 22.4 53.6

86.2 59.4 38.8 74.6

49.4 28.0 15.2 36.2

63.5 62.3 33.5 53.0

71.5 47.3 24.5 47.9

66.2 41.0 34.7 45.7

57.5 27.1 32.7 38.0

68.9 60.1 41.4

56.8 34.3 16.0

76.2 40.3 28.0

35.3 27.3 14.3

45.5 50.1 42.1

60.8 35.2 19.5

51.0 43.7 34.6

41.2 31.5 21.1

78.4 60.6 52.3 52.8 42.6 44.2 41.7 37.8

85.5 49.1 14.8 48.8 22.5 15.4 35.5 50.4

75.0 47.2 25.2 56.1 27.3 21.2 37.0 72.8

53.2 30.6 15.0 29.3 19.4 3.8 22.6 44.6

61.2 47.2 31.4 42.8 35.7 36.7 32.4 42.2

70.1 39.6 17.4 23.6 14.6 23.1 27.1 30.7

59.8 44.2 33.5 30.1 26.5 32.7 26.9 16.9

51.5 32.3 17.4 16.9 18.8 26.9 22.4 16.9



ditionalists, especially Evangelicals and Catholics, supported the Iraq War, opposed abortion, favored traditional marriage and large tax cuts, and had doubts about stem cell research. And they tended to give Bush very high marks on social issues, somewhat lower ratings on foreign policy, and even more modest—but still generally positive—scores on economic policy. Centrists in the three major traditions were less supportive of conservative policy options and more critical of Bush, while modernists in all three took more liberal stances and give Bush very low marks indeed in all areas. Hispanic Protestants leaned toward conservative policies and positive ratings toward Bush, but almost all other religious minorities, as well as seculars, took liberal positions on the five issues and rated Bush’s performance as only fair or poor. There are only a few exceptions: Hispanic Catholics and black Protestants favored traditional marriage, and the former also narrowly backed the Iraq War. On the whole, though, the position of religious groups on important issues certainly seems consistent with their presidential preferences.

Explaining the Vote Did these priorities and attitudes in fact influence voters’ choices in the voting booth? We have previously shown that religious group membership itself was a powerful predictor of vote choice in 2004, almost obliterating the influence of income, education, and other socioeconomic factors (Guth et al. 2005a). For our purposes here, we assume that the impact of religious membership is channeled through the distinctive orientations and issue attitudes that each group fosters. To test this assumption, we ran a logistic regression for the 2004 vote with all the priorities, orientations, and issue variables included, along with dummies for each religious group in Tables 1-4, with Catholic centrists as the omitted reference group. As we expected, virtually all of the religious group variables dropped out. Only one group dummy, that for black Protestants, was still statistically significant when these items were included (indicating they were more Democratic than their stances on priority, civic religion, and issue items would predict). Clearly, religious groups have distinctive partisan alignments primarily because of the specific political views those religious groups foster. Thus, Table 5 reports the results of five different logistic regression models predicting a Bush vote in 2004: the first three models test the impact of priorities, views on religion in public life, and issue stances, respectively. (We have omitted the Bush evaluations from the analysis, given their proximity to the vote choice itself.) The fourth model incorporates all three sets of variables simultaneously, and the fifth adds party identification to the equation. The independent variables are all scored as dichotomous items; although this coding entails a very modest loss in predictive power, it produces greater ease in interpretation, as the impact of each variable can be gauged by the relative size of its coefficient. Model 1 shows the effect of issue priority on the vote. As the negative coefficient reveals, voters with economic priorities were much more likely to vote for Senator Kerry, while the smaller number naming social issues as more crucial were even more likely to vote for Bush. Foreign-policy priorities worked in Bush’s direction but the coefficient

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TABLE 5 Logistic Regression Models of Presidential Vote 2004 Model 1 B Most important issue Social Foreign policy Economics Religion in political life President’s beliefs Candidate religious talk Campaign religion OK Faith important to thinking Faith important to vote Issue position Iraq War justified Pro-life Support traditional marriage Ban stem cell research Favor large tax cuts Party identification Constant Percent correctly classified

Model 2 B

Model 3 B

Model 4 B

Model 5 B

.358 .466 −.901**

.391 .337 −.697

.594** .431** .451** −.083 .315

.607* .307 .363 −.211 .466

3.364*** 1.057*** .638*** .259 1.304***

3.090*** .781*** .425* .198 1.211***

−3.539*** 86.5

−4.116*** 87.5

2.405* .568* .591* .141 .512* 1.008* .834 93.3

.904*** .256 −.715*** 1.055*** .852*** 1.416*** .189 .577***

−.058 62.3

−2.548*** 75.2

Source: 2004 Religion and Politics Post-Election Survey, University of Akron. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

does not approach statistical significance. Knowing a voter’s priorities improves predictive accuracy modestly from a baseline of 51.6 percent correct (Bush’s margin in the survey) to 62.3 percent. The civic religion items in Model 2 do a better job: those who approved the religious discussion in the campaign, thought it important for a president to have strong religious beliefs, thought candidates should talk about religion, and said their faith was important to their vote were all significantly more likely to have voted for Bush. Only the importance of religion to one’s political thinking did not add to the president’s prospects among voters—at least when the other variables were included. Model 2 classifies three out of four voters correctly. Not surprisingly, issue stances do even better. Model 3 shows that support for the Iraq War has an especially powerful effect, followed at some distance by approval of large tax cuts, opposition to abortion, and then support for the traditional definition of marriage. Although favoring a ban on stem cell research has a coefficient in the right direction, it does not reach statistical significance. Stances on these five issues alone predict correctly 86.5 percent of the vote, considerably better than Model 2. Model 4’s combination of priorities, civic religion, and issue positions does only a little better, producing 87.5 percent accuracy. In this model, economic priorities move a voter toward Kerry, but several civic religion orientations still favor Bush, while conservative positions on the five issues—especially Iraq—predict a Republican vote.


The toughest test for the priorities, civic religion orientations, and issues comes in Model 5, where party identification is included. We would expect that the impact of several variables is mediated by partisanship, and that certainly seems to be the case, as the addition does reduce the coefficients of several other variables. But even when the voter’s “standing decision” is taken into account, several other variables maintain or come close to having significant independent influence. Economic priorities were close to significance (at .09) in predicting a Kerry vote, while preferences for a “believer President” still favored Bush. And conservative issue stances, especially on the Iraq War, also buttressed his reelection effort. In all, Model 5 correctly classifies over 93 percent of all voters. Of course, we have not included all possible influences in our analysis. But when income, education, age, gender, and regional variables are added to Model 5, none are statistically significant and none add predictive power to those already in the equation. Similarly, adding other issue items improves the results only very marginally, and only by reducing the influence of related policy items already included in the analysis. A final approach to understanding the impact of religiously informed factors is to consider the way these priorities, orientations, and issues worked in battleground and non-battleground states. Some analysts have argued that such issues were crucial in these closely contested Electoral College contests, while others have rebutted such claims. Table 6 shows the results from Model 5 for these two groups of states.8 Obviously voters responded in somewhat different fashion in battleground and nonbattleground states. In states only nominally contested, economic priorities strongly predicted a Kerry vote, a result absent from the battleground states. Conversely, choice of either foreign-policy or social-issue priorities moves voters significantly toward the president in the battleground states, but no such effect is seen elsewhere. Thus, both foreign-policy and social-issue priorities seem to have helped Bush where it counted. The civic religion variables had little significant impact in either group of states, with the exception that approval of candidate religious talk led voters in the nonbattleground states toward Bush. The issue coefficients tell a more important story: support for the Iraq War was a slightly more powerful asset to Bush in the battleground states, but opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion also added critical votes. In the non-battleground states, these two social issues did not approach significance. Note, on the other side, that support for large tax cuts did have a significant impact in these areas, but not in the battleground states. Partisanship had an almost identical effect in both types of states. Once again, foreign policy and social issues seem to have supplied Bush with the added numbers needed to expand his “normal” partisan coalition with voters concerned about specific issues or categories of issues.

8. The battleground states are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Given the reduced N in this group (548 voters), we have relaxed the significance levels in the table to p < .10.

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TABLE 6 Logistic Regression Models of Presidential Vote 2004: Battleground and Non-Battleground States Battleground States B Most important issue Social Foreign policy Economics Religion in political life President’s beliefs Candidate religious talk Campaign religion OK Faith important to thinking Faith important to vote Issue position Iraq War justified Pro-life Support traditional marriage Ban stem cell research Favor large tax cuts Party identification Constant (N) Percent correctly classified

Non-Battleground States B

1.594* 1.381* −.290

−.113 −.243 −1.110**

.583 −.659 .554 −.369 .314

.545 .817** .354 −.162 .360

2.969*** .972** .903** −.045 −.288 1.105*** .761 (548) 93.6

2.336*** .470 .483 .245 .886*** 1.007*** .990 (1,097) 93.7

Source: 2004 Religion and Politics Post-Election Survey, University of Akron. * p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01.

Conclusions Many observers agree that religion matters in American elections and, especially, that it mattered in 2004. We have developed a religious classification that draws on the insights of two dominant perspectives on religion and politics. Following the ethnoreligious perspective, our analysis demonstrates that the careful sorting of voters into their proper religious tradition helps us understand contemporary electoral choices. But as the religious restructuring perspective suggests, we also find dramatic differences, even within traditions, based on religious belief and behavior, as well as considerable convergence among religious factions across old tradition boundaries. Thus, both religious tradition and traditionalism-modernism had important effects on vote choice in 2004. The “new religious order” in this and other recent presidential elections reveals remarkably distinct coalitions underpinning the two major parties. The Republicans depend heavily on Evangelical Protestants, Latter-day Saints, and traditionalists from all major (and most minor) religious traditions, with the bulk of their remaining support coming from centrists in the three largest ones. The Democrats have clearly retained their historic identity as the party of most religious minorities, but depend far more heavily on secular citizens than ever before, with the bulk of their remaining support coming from religious modernists and centrists.


We have also shown that these coalitions reflect the distinctive priorities and stances that these religious groups take on a host of social, economic, and foreign-policy issues: members of these groups often share and foster distinctive approaches to a whole range of political questions, only some of which we have examined here. While social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and stem cell research are important, they are not the whole story. Religious groups often differ as much on foreign policy or economic issues as they do on many salient social issues (Guth et al. 2005b). And although the story is complex, it is apparent that religious politics did shape the outcome of the 2004 presidential race, especially in states where it really mattered. Our results have substantive importance far beyond describing the religious basis of electoral choice. Candidates for office and elected officials respond in myriad ways to their electoral constituencies. No reader is likely to miss many of the implications for electoral strategies and policy making. In electoral terms, Republican strategists will continue to weigh the relative importance of mobilizing religious traditionalists in the three major Christian traditions (but especially Evangelicals), appealing to the “new traditionalists” among religious minorities, such as Hispanic and black Protestants, and satisfying enough religious centrists to carry Election Day. And, since November 2004, the Democrats have engaged in an even more visible and sometimes rancorous debate over the best means to expand their existing religious coalition to other groups. This is likely to be a vexing task, given both the growing diversity of religious traditions and perspectives within the party, and an increasingly large and sometimes vocal secular component (see, e.g., Democracy Corps 2005). Indeed, the visible public experimentation with “new” religious strategies by potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidates such as Senator Hillary Clinton is but one indication of the importance and complexity of that task. The programmatic agendas of Republicans and Democrats similarly reflect these religious coalitions. Although much of the public argument has centered around the role of moral issues in the 2004 outcome, virtually every critical issue of recent years has been shaped by religious politics: abortion, stem cell research, same-sex marriage, judicial nominations, and the Iraq War, to be sure—but also tax policy, environmental politics, and social welfare programs (Guth 2004; Guth et al. 2005b; Yankelovich 2005). None of this should be surprising; not only have the Republican and Democratic activist corps been reshaped along religious lines, but the same religious formations have appeared in Congress as well, influencing voting on a wide range of issues (Layman 2001; Guth and Kellstedt 2005). Indeed, all this behooves political scientists to understand better the role that religion plays in all aspects of American political life.

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Appendix Question wording for priorities in voting: “In your vote for president, how important were economic issues, such as jobs and taxes?” “What about foreign policy issues, such as the war on terrorism and Iraq?” “What about social issues, such as abortion or gay rights?” “Were [economic, foreign policy, social] issues very important, somewhat important, or not very important to your vote for president?” Respondents were then asked: “Overall, what was most important to your vote: economic, foreign policy, or social issues?” Question wording for civic religion variables: “It is important to me that a president has strong religious beliefs. (1) Completely agree (2) Agree (3) Disagree (4) Completely disagree.” “Which of the following statements best describes the relationship of your religious faith to your voting decision in 2004? (1) My faith was more important to my voting decision than other factors (2) My faith was about as important to my voting decision as other factors (3) My faith was less important to my voting decision than other factors.” “On a scale where 1 means that your religion is very important to your political thinking and 5 means that your religion is not at all important to your political thinking where would you place yourself? (1) One (2) Two (3) Three (4) Four (5) Five.” “It makes me uncomfortable when politicians talk about their personal religious beliefs. Do you completely agree, agree, disagree or completely disagree?” “In your opinion, was religion discussed too much, too little or about the right amount in the presidential campaign?” Question wording for Bush evaluations: “I am going to ask you to rate the job George W. Bush is doing in several different areas. For each area, please tell me if you think the job he is doing is excellent, good, fair, poor, or very poor. How would you rate President Bush’ handling of the economy, such as jobs and taxes? How would you rate President Bush’s handling of foreign policy, such as the war on terrorism and Iraq? How would you rate President Bush’s handling of social issues, such as abortion and gay rights?”

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Question wording for issues: “Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the war in Iraq? (1) It was fully justified (2) It was probably justified (3) It was probably unjustified (4) It was completely unjustified.” “Which of these statements comes closest to your view of the proper legal status of marriage? (1) The law should define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. OR (2) The law should define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, but recognize legal agreements between same-sex couples. OR (3) The law should define marriage as a union between two people, regardless of their gender.” “Which of the following statements comes closest to your view on tax cuts?” “Large tax cuts are good for the economy because they encourage necessary investment and create jobs” or “Large tax cuts are bad for the economy because they cause budget deficits and prevent necessary government spending. (1) Large tax cuts are good (2) Large tax cuts are bad.” “Now I would like you to think about the issue of abortion. Which of these statements comes closest to your views on abortion? (1) It should be legal and solely up to a woman to decide. OR (2) It should be legal in a wide variety of circumstances. OR (3) It should be legal in only a few circumstances such as to save the life of the mother. OR (4) It should not be legal at all.” “The government should ban all scientific research involving stem cells from human embryos. (1) Strongly agree (2) Agree (3) No Opinion (4) Disagree (5) Strongly disagree.”