Evangelicals Down in the Polls? Not Hardly A much publicized Atlantic Monthly piece in October by Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute that claimed conservative evangelicals were a declining political influence. “Underlying trends indicate that at least one reason why there are a number of close elections across the South is the declining dominance of white evangelical Protestants, the most stalwart of GOP supporters,” he wrote.... Like many others, Jones insisted that “a look at generational differences demonstrates that this is only the beginning of a major shift away from a robust white evangelical presence and influence in the country.” Touting a form of demographic predestination, Jones thinks liberal, less religiously observant Millennials foreshadow a more left-leaning, secular future.... [But] Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition released his own poll showing that conservative Christians, Catholic and Protestant, together were a third of the electorate and over half of total Republican voters. “This is not only the largest single constituency in the electorate,” Reed said, “but it is larger than the African-American vote, the Hispanic vote, the union vote and the gay vote combined.”... It is often claimed that conservative religious voters, especially white evangelicals, are going the way of the dinosaur, consigned to demographic irrelevance. But they were a key component of the Republicans’ 2014 midterm victories. weeklystandard/blogs/conservative-christians-still-key-republicans_818326.html?utm_medium=twitter
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 04:03:06 +0000