Spoils of Victory

Dec 09, 2006

Spoils of Victory

From Christianity Today: Spoils of Victory

In the immediate aftermath of the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress, conventional wisdom said many evangelicals had abandoned the GOP.

News outlets and analysts eagerly described a "seismic shift" that pointed to the "end of the conservative pendulum swing" and a weakened Republican base. In a widely publicized Beliefnet poll, 30 percent of 771 evangelicals reported voting for fewer Republicans than in past elections. Early exit polls showed almost a third of white evangelicals had voted for Democratic Congressional candidates, some of whom touted pro-life views.

"The Religious Right's dominance over politics and evangelicals has come to an end," Democratic adviser and Sojourners/Call to Renewal leader Jim Wallis told Christianity Today the day after the election.

But a closer look at the results suggested something else: White evangelical Protestants, who have recently bolstered the GOP base, did not desert the party. Republicans actually captured 70 percent of their vote, while Democrats received 28 percent. Compared to the 2004 House races, when evangelicals cast 74 percent of their ballots for Republicans and 25 percent for Democrats, the small shift suggested the party's base had stayed home—with the GOP.

We didn't really see a lot of change in the voting patterns of evangelicals," said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and co-editor of The Values Campaign? The Christian Right and the 2004 Election. Green said the bigger swings for Democrats involved white Roman Catholics, 55 percent of whom voted for Democrats versus 44 percent for Republicans, along with less religious and non-religious voters. "That's where Democrats had their biggest gains," Green said.

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"It depends on how the Democrats act," said Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., an evangelical. "If they tend to the left, it won't take them 12 years to get kicked out. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker because pro-life, conservative Democrats have won, and I think she realizes that." Davis said voters and unyielding pro-life Democrats have sent the party's leadership a powerful message. "It tells Nancy Pelosi that if you don't have the pro-life Democrats in Congress, you can't be Speaker. You can't govern. You can't talk about the minimum wage" and other priorities.

Linking pro-life measures to these platform priorities could be effective. Davis, sponsor of the Pregnant Women Support Act, said he is planning to re-introduce his legislation with one major difference—a $2 per hour increase in the minimum wage. "This will help allow a young lady to afford to keep her baby," Davis said.