Posted on 12/07/2012 12:49:23 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president this year, received the lowest level of support among evangelicals of any Republican presidential candidate since Bob Dole in 1996, according to a report by Barna Group, a Christian polling organization.
Romney received the support of 81 percent of evangelicals, compared to 88 percent for John McCain in 2008, and 83 percent and 85 percent, respectively, for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. Only Dole received a lower level of evangelical support at 74 percent in Barna's polling.
Barna's results differ from other polls showing Romney received a higher proportion of the evangelical vote than McCain. The exit polls for the National Election Pool, for instance, showed Romney getting a share of the white evangelical vote that was four percentage points higher, 78 to 74 percent, than McCain. The differences can be explained, though, in how "evangelical" is defined for the different polls.
In the National Election Pool, an evangelical is simply one who self-identifies as evangelical or "born again." For Barna, an evangelical is defined by a set of theological beliefs.
A "born again Christian," in Barna's categorization, is one who has made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important to them today and who believes that they will go to Heaven when they die because they had confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.
An "evangelical" meets all those criteria plus affirms an additional seven theological beliefs consistent with evangelical doctrine. These include questions about proselytizing, the existence of Satan, salvation through grace, the divinity of Christ, the authority of scripture, and God's omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. "Born again" and "evangelical" are not dependent upon worship attendance or denomination.
Barna's other religious categories include "notional Christians," who identify as Christian but do not meet the born again criteria, "other," who belong to a non-Christian religious group, and "skeptics," which includes atheists, agnostics and those with no religious faith.
Under those categories, Barna's research shows that Romney only won the evangelical vote, 81 to 17 percent, and the non-evangelical born again Christian vote, 56 to 43 percent. Combining those categories, Romney won among all born again Christians, 60 to 39 percent.
President Barack Obama won among notional Christians, 57 to 41 percent, other religious groups, 69 to 30 percent, and skeptics, 68 to 28 percent.
The survey of 1,008 adults, including 771 voters, was conducted Nov. 6-10. The margin of error for the sample of voters is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Or, cold it be, that the leaders of the stupid party are just to stupid to learn from past mistakes....
I think by now after Bush I, Dole, and McCain even people with such low I.Q's as the rino leaders of the Republicans could see if you want your base to come out and vote for you, you first have to give them something to vote for.
Republicans are not the dem party who vote for a party. Republicans actually think and have principles and if you do not give them the principles they think this party stands for then what it the point of voting for this party??
This election we had a choice of a communist muslim and a democrat occultist. During a year republicans could have won everything, they CHOSE to lose because they want to be liked at the Washington parties they go to.
When was the last time a Republican president came from the liberal North East???? Yeah, real hard to figure out what the real possibility of the election results were going to be....so let's blame evangelicals who vote morals and we know from history every time we put up a rino they stay home. Yeah, let's do the one thing guaranteed to make them stay home them blame them. I am sick of the idiotic argument. What logical person could put the blame on their shoulders and not the sick rino leaders of the party. You better bend our way or we will vilify you....ugh. Childish.
Presumably you'll be right there at the forefront when a "Purity Party" is formed,a party that will accept nothing less than "perfection" in all ways.Of course the formation of that Party will ensure a President Hillary,a President Mosschelle Obama,a President Michael Moore,a President Sandra Fluke and a President James Earl Carter IV.Among others.
Keep one vital fact in mind...Jesus Christ HIMSELF could not be elected President of the United States today.Think about that...long and hard.
Well, let’s play spin the religious vote again, kiddies! We just looove that game, we could play it over and over and over again! Sooo, here goes!
The Evangelical vote was “low” at 81%, and Republican Presidential candidate Romney made no effort to woo them, but ...
The Catholic vote was “high” at 48% with many attempts to woo them culminating in the selection of a Vice Presidential candidate who is Catholic, and the ticket didn’t even win the VP candidate’s home state ...
And then we have Presidential candidate Romney’s own religious group, the Mormons, whose support was lower than Evangelicals!
What are we to conclude? Catholics are anti-Mormon? No, they just have baggage, it’s sooo hard to break their lifelong Democrat habit, nevermind the Evangelicals went pretty much cold turkey with Reagan.
Mormons are anti-Mormon, lol?
Nooo, of course not. But, bloviating on about anti-Mormon Mormons cannot possibly be any more schizophrenic than repeatedly banging their heads upon reality, trying to pin this loss on Evangelicals.
What Evangelical stronghold state did Romney lose? What Catholic stronghold state did he win?
There are an awful lot of painful contortions going on here, in order to avoid concluding that the Catholics lost this election for Romney.
There, I said it. Post a hundred yard screed or three, parse the language to death, find some minor subset of the group that looks a little better for apologia sake. Par for the course on FR these days.
It’s still denial.
This is the straw man of all straw men. None of us were looking for "Purity".
The Presidential candidate recieving my vote must meet one test. He or she must have a track record of moving the political football toward the Conservative goalpost. Sarah Palin has that record.
Did Romney meet that standard? Enough of this "perfection" straw man crap ok?
But instead of blaming the evangelicals, why not put the blame squarely where it belongs; on the GOPe for,
1. giving us another candidate who was not going to be able to get the base out to vote and,
2. did every thing they could to diss the base.
Romney was and always will be a very liberal member of the GOP, who's record is not much different from Obama, and as I mentioned above, not a true Christian. He was just the next person who felt they were next in line to try and win the presidency, just like Dole & McCain.
That's not being judgment or hateful, that's just stating a fact.
Yes, no other voter block - not even the Mormon’s - voted so overwhelmingly as while evangelicals, so they must be to blame!
Worthy saying again:
Well, let’s play spin the religious vote again, kiddies! We just looove that game, we could play it over and over and over again! Sooo, here goes!
The Evangelical vote was “low” at 81%, and Republican Presidential candidate Romney made no effort to woo them, but ...
The Catholic vote was “high” at 48% with many attempts to woo them culminating in the selection of a Vice Presidential candidate who is Catholic, and the ticket didn’t even win the VP candidate’s home state ...
And then we have Presidential candidate Romney’s own religious group, the Mormons, whose support was lower than Evangelicals!
What are we to conclude? Catholics are anti-Mormon? No, they just have baggage, it’s sooo hard to break their lifelong Democrat habit, nevermind the Evangelicals went pretty much cold turkey with Reagan.
Mormons are anti-Mormon, lol?
Nooo, of course not. But, bloviating on about anti-Mormon Mormons cannot possibly be any more schizophrenic than repeatedly banging their heads upon reality, trying to pin this loss on Evangelicals.
What Evangelical stronghold state did Romney lose? What Catholic stronghold state did he win?
There are an awful lot of painful contortions going on here, in order to avoid concluding that the Catholics lost this election for Romney.
There, I said it. Post a hundred yard screed or three, parse the language to death, find some minor subset of the group that looks a little better for apologia sake. Par for the course on FR these days.
It’s still denial.
I’m not sure what a black Evangelical is, but where is the breakdown of the black vote, which denominations, and are you sure that it was 98% of black “Evangelicals”? what was the percentage for the atheist blacks, the non-Evangelical, and which churches do they belong to?
How did Evangelical Hispanics vote?
How did non religious whites vote? 75%, 85% Obama?
While Evangelicals are the most right wing voters in America, people like you are massively, overwhelmingly Obama voters, you voting republican makes you something of a rarity, yet who do you attack?
You are one confused boy.
Romney shaped the 2012 and the 2008 primary field in 2006.
After your childish post, can you name any group that voted more for the Mormon, than the Evangelicals?
Why don't you post the figures for the anti-christian vote, the atheist vote? They are so massively left wing, that they vote almost precisely opposite of the Evangelicals, usually in the 75 to 85% democrat column.
There are an awful lot of painful contortions going on here, in order to avoid concluding that the Catholics lost this election for Romney.
Thanks for getting to the real point behind this nonsense.
We are always being sold the false idea that Roman Catholics and their church are conservative. If we were ever going to see this play out in an election it would have been this year. The obamacare mandates obviously violate their religious freedom and their church hierarchy was prety clear that they did not support obama. Yet, a majority of Roman Catholics voted for obama.
Evangelical Christians were pretty much disregarded by the Pubs and yet voted for the Pubs in huge numbers (81%).
I think this election teaches that the "Catholic vote"is a demographic that conservatives should ignore. Rather they would be better served to pursue sub sets of this vote such as blue collar workers, young marrieds, and Hispanics.
Moving this discussion in a different direction, my Pastor gave a great message after the election. He acknowledged that the culture is lost. However, he made the uplifting point that Christianity grows under persecution. His example was China. When Mao marched into Red Square it was widely believed that in China there were less then 150,000 Christians. Now we believe there are at least 100 million Christians in China.
I think as everyone is trying to find firm ground to stand on after this election one thing is clear. There really is no point in watering down our beliefs. We should stand firm in our faith and witness to the lost even as we are condemned as "intolerant and insensitive" for doing it.
Look what happened in the USSR. Decades of unbelievable persecution, and now they have more spiritual freedom and growth occurring that we’re permitted and see.
Yep, so can we blame the evangelicals for our dim-wit president? For once — just for once?
You might want to check into the rise of the church-state connection in Russia between the Orthodox and the State. Evangelicals, especially Baptists, have been running into a lot of problems. However, the good side is even with the state persecution Evangelicals are growing in number.
FWIW, I think we are entering into another dark period for the world with the rise of ruling oligarchies and decreasing freedom for individuals.
Yeah, I know it isn’t all roses. I know there are churches here in the US which are actively engaging opening Bible schools and teaching and equipping new church leaders over there in the event that they should lose that freedom again.
There’s a feeling of haste about it, but in the meantime, it is going forward.
Technology is going to allow for a control and monitoring of people on a global scale that is going to make it very difficult for those who don’t comply.
I wish I could agree more, but while there is more freedom than than in the Cold War, but with the Russian Orthodox, being largely institutionalized as Rome, and having State sanction, evangelical churches are once again being persecuted.
See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2958299/posts and links in 1st post.
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