So you can see that a pretty large population of Evangelicals don’t consider Mormons to be Christians. Thus it is wrong to say, as you did, that “the Mormon faith of the Republican candidate never even was an issue.” It definitely was.
BigT, that is an awesome idea.
Yeah, some of them did swallow the Faux News FlavorAid.
Others stuck to their principles*.
It’s not that none of them voted for Romney, just that not enough did.
*In which I include both the “Mormons != Christians” crowd, and the more socially liberal group.
J_S_L_E, I’m basing it on conversations here, in the buckle of the Bible belt. These sentiments aren’t kept private, any more than the fact that they’re absolutely appalled to have a man of color as President.
But you have no indication that affected their voting. But there’s lots of evidence that their perception of Obama’s faith was a factor.
And it doesn’t explain everything else I listed in the OP either that had nothing to do with the Presidential race.
So a Mexican, a Kenyan and a Palestinian on the ballot? The GOP is right, the foreigners really are taking over!
You believe that whether the candidate is a Christian or not does not affect the Evangelical vote?
I believe that if it did, there would be some evidence of this, especially when there is tons of evidence that they were suspect of the opponent.
If you think Texas is the most Republican state, you’re forgetting a dozen other ones.
Utah was by far the most Republican state, going 73-25 for Romney. Not a single county in the entire state was carried by Obama, not even Salt Lake City (cities usually skew Democratic.) Other states that were even redder than Texas include Idaho, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Wyoming, and West Virginia.
Texas has large, cosmopolitan cities and a big Hispanic community, which prevents it from being as red as the aforementioned states.
Well, the Friday before Billy Graham took out a full page ad in USA Today (and I do not know if other media) encouraging the public to vote for Biblical Values. As my sister said: does that include the value of letting no one add any further to the Testament? My reply: maybe he means the value of selling everything you have and giving the proceeds to charity.
Queasiness about the Mormon thing probably played in the background, couldn’t be helped.
Aside: Last I had heard at the end of the Bush years and after Huckabee failed to get traction, the Evangelicals were somewhat put off at the notion that the neocons and bizcons had been playing them for 30 years, using them as a secure “who else are ya gonna vote for” core but providing no satisfactory movement in their direction. Then came the Tea Party talking a big game about traditional values, but at its core more an anti-taxation, anti-federal movement with a lot of (IMO not always very well thought-through) genuflecting in the direction of Ayn Rand rather than Jesus Christ.
Also in the last decade those who were the leaders of the rise of the organized Religious Right as a bloc have aged and died (Falwell), become doddering embarassments (Robertson), or been disgraced (swing arm, hit one). I wonder if the rise of Left Behind rapture pseudo-theology has also created something of a paradox when seeking activism, since why should you bother to Build Jerusalem on this Green and Pleasant Land if you are going to be whisked off any day now and what was left will get clobbered.
And I’d be careful of writing in “Jesus” lest some Puerto Rican claim we meant him…
[quote=“John_Stamos_Left_Ear, post:1, topic:640242”]
[li]The Mormon faith of the Republican candidate never even was an issue.[/li][/QUOTE]
You mean, no party made an issue of it publicly after Romney’s nomination was decided. That does not mean all the evangelicals were willing to vote for a Mormon. I daresay it will come out that many stayed home, or left the presidential line on the ballot blank.
Oh for crying out loud.
Another 69% said that the religious beliefs of the candidate mattered to them.
So, how did they vote? It wasn’t for Romney. He got only 11% of those born-agains, who turned instead to Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor.
But deep-rooted tensions between Mormons and evangelical Christians persist, and could affect the turnout on Tuesday, several evangelical leaders said.
“Romney has staked out issues that are aligned with evangelicals,” said Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the conservative nonprofit American Family Association. But, he added, Mr. Romney’s faith may ultimately present a problem in the voting booth. “It’s still an issue for some evangelicals and may influence their voting decision on Nov. 6,” he said. “There are a number of evangelicals who will not vote for someone who doesn’t adhere to orthodox Christianity.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/148100/hesitant-support-mormon-2012.aspx
PRINCETON, NJ – Though the vast majority of Americans say they would vote for their party’s nominee for president in 2012 if that person happens to be a Mormon, 22% say they would not, a figure largely unchanged since 1967.
I concede that there were quantifiable rumblings during the Primary process about his Mormonism. Less than I expected, but it was there.
But after he was nominated, I didn’t hear about it at all. I was actually quite surprised about it. And when I did hear about it, it was anecdotal cases such as this one.
You will notice that the anecdote that I linked to explains why that Evangelical is picking the Mormon over the “Professing Christian.” Though admittedly anecdotal, I saw enough similar expressions to know that it was not that fringe of a position.
But Terr has yet to find an example of an Evangelical weighing those options and coming up with the different conclusion. Even an anecdote. Let alone any indication of a real statistics such as how half of the deep south thinks Obama is a Muslim.
Obama isn’t a Muslim yet it’s super easy to find large swathes of Evangelicals who feel that he is and that it is a negative for Evangelical voters.
Romney is a professed and devout Mormon… Yet we can find no similar polls that show this to be a negative for Evangelical voters.
That tells me that most Evangelicals would rather vote for the Mormon they knew than the “Christian/Muslim/Atheist” they didn’t. And I still don’t see much evidence to sway me.
I will respond with what I already stated:
Once Romney escaped the Primary (and was no longer competing against mainstream Christians) it pretty much ceased to be an issue. Any cites that it didn’t?
That would be a possibility… But it wouldn’t explain the clean sweep for gay marriage and two states freeing the weed, would it?
In the past, Evangelicals would show up even in midterms for such things, so passionate they were to vote them down. Not this time, not even in a Presidential election year.
Again: “Though the vast majority of Americans say they would vote for their party’s nominee for president in 2012 if that person happens to be a Mormon, 22% say they would not, a figure largely unchanged since 1967.”
I don’t really see any support for your view that these people lied when they said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon. Of that they suddenly changed their opinions.
That poll was taken before there was an actual Mormon candidate. It was “Generic Mormom.” And we all knew how Generic Republican did against Obama back in June, don’t we…
If they followed through on those beliefs, why is there no evidence of it? Should be easy to find. It’s very possible that they - like the cite I showed - decided that voting for the Mormon was preferable than voting for Obama. There is at least some anecdotal evidence that some people made that decision. Yet none for the inverse? I find that odd.
Why should it be “easy to find”? If you can find any study that determines the percentage of the evangelical vote for a Republican in these elections compared to previous ones, then it would be “easy to find”. Otherwise - no.
You haven’t supported your assumption that those 22% changed their minds. Or even that half of them did.
Do you have any evidence that Obama’s (perceived) faith was an issue in this election?
Romney’s faith figured prominently in the primaries with idiots like Rick Perry running on not much more than “I am a real Christian” until he stepped on his tongue once too often.
Obama and the Democrats were never going to make religion an issue.
Once Romney had the nomination, Evangelical leadership began promoting him for his social values, (often ignoring their criticism for his faith from a few months earlier).
This article from Christianity Today notes that Evangelical support for Romney was the highest level seen in presidential politics.
However, what your OP seems to miss is that the Evangelicals do not have the numbers to determine national elections. Their control comes from 1) their ability to shape, (although not determine), Republican primaries, so they have a strong influence on who gets to run and 2) their earlier ability to use hot button issues to bring out non-affiliated or loosely affiliated voters for issues that are dear to Evangelicals’ hearts. Several years ago, when the very notion of Same Sex Marriage was new and scary, they were able to mobilize a lot of voters who were not Evangelicals to push through numerous referenda, sweeping aside many Democrats in the process. Now that the notion of SSM has aged and is less scary, they are less able to use that as a way to motivate other voters to their positions.
Falwell’s “Moral Majority” was good at getting out the vote, but it did not actually provide the numbers to get Reagan elected. The same has held true throughout the past 32 years.
I suspect that it will be a while before enough polls have been taken to determine whether or not Evangelicals sat out this election. (The linked article notes that the question was not asked very often in polls, to date.) Until those numbers are in, most of what is said in this thread is going to be speculative, at best.
Because anti-Evangelical sentiment against Obama is easy to find. Why wouldn’t it be easy to find anti-Evangelical sentiment for Romney?
And you haven’t explained why it’s easy to find Evangelical sentiment against Obama specifically but not the same thing against Romney once he got past the Primaries.
I would believe that the 22% of Evangelicals stuck to their guns - if I saw some evidence that they did. You have not found this evidence.
Meanwhile, there is no shortage of anecdotal evidence of Evangelicals who did choose that specific Mormon when given a choice between Romney and Obama and there is tons of evidence that Evangelicals did specifically refuse to support Obama for either their incorrect perception of his religion, their disbelief in his self-professed faith, how he interpreted his faith into policy positions (i.e. abortion and other social issues) or some combination of the three.
Now that Romney has lost, will Billy Graham put Mormon back on the cult list?
It is unlear how much that has emanated under Billy Graham’s name in recent months was issued by Billy or issued by his fire-breathing bigot son, Franklin. Billy (93) has been sick and confined to his home through much of this year and Franklin has been spouting a lot of stuff under Billy’s name that does not sound much like Billy. (I am not a fan of Billy Graham for a number of reasons, but even in his anti-semitic phase he was more rueful that they “had power” than condemning. Franklin simply hates and is not afraid to express his hatred.)