Religious Voters and Obama
May 10, 2012, 1:19 pm
Posted by Eduardo Peñalver
This new poll has some interesting data on how different religious groups are viewing the presidential election. Here’s the summary (HT TPM):
White evangelical voters strongly support Romney over Obama (68%vs. 19%). Catholic voters overall say that they would be more likely to vote for Obama than Romney (46% to 39%), although white Catholic voters favor Romney over Obama by a significant margin (48% to 37%). Obama has an advantage over Romney among white mainline Protestant voters (50% vs. 37%) and religiously unaffiliated voters (57% vs. 22%).
I assume that the Obama lean among Catholics is largely due to the turn away from the Republican party by Latino voters.
Please, Eduardo and everybody else, especially the media, especially the “news” networks among the media, get a grip. Within my memory one party or another has not known as late as June 1 and beyond who its presidential nomination will be that year. And until CNN, FoxNews et al needed “content,” the presidential campaign traditionally began on Labor Day. Let’s stay calm and pay attention to other things that are being done to us until we know enough about the situation to know what we think about events not scheduled until Nov. 6. Please.
The Mideast is in flames, Europe is in collapse, the Cubs are lousy as usual, and we don’t NEED to think about the presidential election until the time we used to think about it — autumn. Buy an ice cream cone, shoot off fireworks, enjoy summer.
These numbers suggest to me that the Catholic bishops have got their work cut out for them as they campaign against President Obama with their fortnight before July 4, 2012, regarding freedom of religion.
And now President Obama has said that he personally is in favor of same-sex marriage, which the Catholic bishops are against.
Interesting to see how many Americans know Mitt is a Mormon but still intend to vote for him. It could be a sign that the old antipathy to Mormons is dying.
It might be a good time for Mitt to speak openly and freely about his religious beliefs and practices. There are elements of the Mormon religion that could appeal to non-Mormons who know little about Joseph Smith, Heavenly Mother, etc.
As Christians, including Catholics, are leaving their denominations for various reasons, they might consider conversion to Mormonism if they knew more about it.
Obama’s approval of same sex marriage provides Romney with a perfect opening to explain his own religion’s beliefs about marriage. (On earth and in eternity.)
Evolutionary convergence?
President Obama: ‘I’m personally in favor of same-sex marriage, but it’s really up to the states.’
Mitt Romney: ‘I’m personally opposed to same-sex marriage, but it’s really up to the states.’
In a remarkable vindication of Darwin’s theories, both men have evolved into politicians.
Excellent, Gerelyn. You’re writing so close to the line between sincerity and irony that I can’t tell which side you’re on.
@ Tom Blackburn. “the Cubs are lousy as usual” Well, at least some things are as they should be.
Gerelyn: Mitt Romney will probably not “speak openly and freely about his religious beliefs and practices.”
Mitt Romney plans to run as the Republican candidate for president who happens to be Mormon.
If white evangelicals are already supporting him over Obama by a wide margin, he does not need to worry about losing white evangelicals.
In a remarkable vindication of Darwin’s theories, both men have evolved into politicians.
Jim,
Yes, but many likely Romney voters don’t believe in evolution.
Romney already did make that speech – Romney’s ‘Faith in America’ Address – back in 2007
“The Mideast is in flames, Europe is in collapse, the Cubs are lousy as usual, and we don’t NEED to think about the presidential election until the time we used to think about it — autumn. Buy an ice cream cone, shoot off fireworks, enjoy summer.”
True, true, true. Even NPR, from which I get much of my news, and which fed us a steady diet of Romney v. Santorum all later winter and spring, getting in the way of more important stories, falls for this stuff. I turned on the news at 6 AM this morning:
Three stories in headlines
Obama approves gay marriage
Big bomb blast in Damascus (that is important, I grant you)
Death (at age 84) of a British hairdresser.
Period.
In defense of the Cubs (not that I am usually wont to defend them) they actually have been a couple of clicks better than lousy recently. More problematically, the White Sox are in danger of sinking into the depths of the standings usually occupied by the Cubs.
Tom Blackburn and Nicholas Clifford: We in the United States may have an over-supply of news-media-outlets that cover mostly U.S. news. (But I don’t think we in the U.S. have an over-supply of news-media-outlets that have lots of foreign news reporters.)
So we have all these journalists who are paid salaries.
So to make it appear that they are doing something to earn their salaries, they have to report stuff.
So from now until the presidential elections results in 2012 are known, these journalists are going to be reporting stuff connected with President Obama’s re-election campaign and the campaign of his Republican challenger.
In addition to so-called news reporters, we in the United States also have an abundance of political commentators.
Nicholas Clifford: I think that President Obama’s comments about his personal view of gay marriage are news worthy.
Obama’s views of gay marriage are indeed newsworthy, though whether worthy of quite all the attention they are getting among the chattering classes to the exclusion of much else, I’m not sure. And I realize that it is a lot cheaper to cover Romney v. Santorum (or now Romney v. Obama) than to explore (for instance) the significance of the French elections, or the significance of the succession problems in China (both of which NPR has covered, but not much).
As it is easier and cheaper for outlets like NPR to cover the problems in the US health care system than it is to look at ways in which other countries have tried to deal with similar problems (one of them, Canada, is only a few miles away). It’s as if we had nothing to learn from France or Italy or Germany or anywhere else.