Remarkably, the 26 percent of the 2014 electorate who were white evangelicals, according to exit polls, is higher than the 23 percent of 2004, when evangelicals were lionized as an imposing electoral force. Their key role in reelecting fellow evangelical George W. Bush provoked overwrought rhetoric by some on the left about the threat of impending theocracy. (Bush also won Hispanic evangelicals.)
Much of the public reaction to conservative Christian voting patterns, especially for evangelicals, is hyperbolic””both the warnings of impending theocracy and the claims of demographic collapse. But as religion reporter Mark Silk has noted: “Simply put, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.” The 2014 exit polls show the “religious layout of the electorate looks almost identical to the last midterm election in 2010, and not much different from the 2012 presidential election.”
Wherever demographic trends lead in the future, conservative Christians were decisive in the 2014 election, and their percentage of the electorate has not declined.
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(Weekly Standard) Mark Tooley on evangelicals and the recent Election
Remarkably, the 26 percent of the 2014 electorate who were white evangelicals, according to exit polls, is higher than the 23 percent of 2004, when evangelicals were lionized as an imposing electoral force. Their key role in reelecting fellow evangelical George W. Bush provoked overwrought rhetoric by some on the left about the threat of impending theocracy. (Bush also won Hispanic evangelicals.)
Much of the public reaction to conservative Christian voting patterns, especially for evangelicals, is hyperbolic””both the warnings of impending theocracy and the claims of demographic collapse. But as religion reporter Mark Silk has noted: “Simply put, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.” The 2014 exit polls show the “religious layout of the electorate looks almost identical to the last midterm election in 2010, and not much different from the 2012 presidential election.”
Wherever demographic trends lead in the future, conservative Christians were decisive in the 2014 election, and their percentage of the electorate has not declined.
Read it all.