McChurch Losing Ground

Is U.S. evangelical vote in play?

Fri Mar 7, 2008 8:32am EST

By Ed Stoddard - Analysis

DALLAS (Reuters) - Evangelical Christians who have greatly influenced recent U.S. elections are seen playing a different but once again key role in this November's White House race and analysts say both parties are keen to woo them.

"I think it (the evangelical vote) will be different this time round. The evangelical community is more fractured than it has been in the past," said Allen Hertzke, director of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma.

One in four U.S. adults count themselves as evangelical or "born-again" Christian, giving them electoral clout in a country where religion and politics often mix.

All of the contenders in the presidential race -- Republican presumptive nominee John McCain and Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who are battling for the Democratic crown -- are Protestant Christians.

Obama importantly in evangelical eyes had an adult "conversion experience" into the United Church of Christ while Clinton was raised a Methodist. McCain grew up in the mainline Episcopal faith but now attends a Baptist church in Phoenix.

Analysts say if Obama is the Democratic nominee he could make inroads into this Republican bloc because of his frank talk about faith and appeal to young evangelicals.

McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam and Arizona senator, faces the difficulty of wooing skeptical religious conservatives within his own party who view him as soft on some of their core issues, such as stem-cell research and gay marriage.

This could dampen their enthusiasm to turn out and vote the way they did in 2004, when 78 percent of white evangelicals who cast ballots did so for President George W. Bush.

But Clinton, a New York senator who is an object of wrath in many conservative Christian circles because of her liberal positions and feminist image, could draw them to the polls for McCain in numbers that a match-up with Obama might not.

Opinion polls show most white evangelicals firmly in the Republican camp. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows McCain with a 70 to 25 percent lead over Obama and about the same margin over Clinton with this group.

But hard-core conservative Christians in the Republican Party are unhappy with McCain on many grounds, ranging from his failure to support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage to his past criticism of leaders in the movement.

So while polls may show him with an almost three to one edge he may find that some of those who have favored him in surveys will not show up to vote for him at the ballot box.

"Evangelicals lean Republican to such an extent that Republicans cannot win without them," said Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

"They come from a background that is the whole loaf or nothing. They don't compromise and they know how to go if somebody is not with them 100 percent," he said.

But Clinton would solve McCain's problem on this score.

"If Clinton gets the nomination then conservative evangelicals will come out for vote for McCain like he's the second coming," said David Domke, a professor of communication at the University of Washington.

Those white evangelicals already in the Democratic fold in the South though show a decided preference for Clinton. Exit polls for the primary vote on February 5 showed Clinton overwhelmingly won over Tennessee's white evangelical Democrats with 78 percent to only 12 percent for Obama.

YOUNG EVANGELICALS

Analysts see Obama wooing some wavering evangelicals especially young ones by his activism in areas such as the global AIDS pandemic as well as his youthful, rock star image.

"If Obama is the nominee I think he will have an ability to appeal to some of the more moderate evangelicals and there will be a generational factor as well," said Hertzke.

He said while younger evangelicals also tended to be conservative and oppose abortion rights -- which Obama supports -- they also had a broad range of concerns such as human rights abroad, global poverty and the environment.

The 71-year-old McCain would be the oldest American ever elected to a first presidential term while Obama would be the country's first black president.

Both tales have a wide resonance and Obama and McCain each has a compelling narrative to add that evangelicals find especially attractive: the adult convert and the war hero.

"Obama is comfortable speaking about his faith and he had an adult conversion experience and that has real resonance in the evangelical world," said Hertzke.

McCain by contrast does not seem as relaxed talking about his faith as Obama, who pointedly devotes a whole section to it on his campaign web site.

But patriotic U.S. Christians, who regard sacrifice for "God and country" as a virtue, are impressed by McCain's record as a naval aviator and prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.

And McCain has two trump cards over the Democrats with most evangelicals: his staunch opposition to abortion rights and his unflinching backing of the Iraq war, which many conservative Christians still strongly support.

(Editing by David Alexander and David Wiessler)

(For more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online here)