Evangelicals still aren't finding their way to Obama, study finds
Democrats like to say that, this year, they finally will dig into the Republicans’ traditional advantage among evangelical voters. After all, social conservatives are skeptical of John McCain, and Barack Obama seems so comfortable talking about his faith (at least when his former pastor isn’t involved).
But a new analysis from the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that Obama is doing just as badly among white evangelical voters as his party’s 2004 nominee was at this point.
The report, based on a national Pew poll conducted last month, found that just 25% of white evangelicals support Obama, compared to the 26% who said they backed John F. Kerry’s candidacy in the summer of 2004. (Kerry wound up winning just 21% of that group, according to exit polls.)
The Pew analysis found McCain winning 61% of white evangelicals, and most of the remaining 14% of those polled said they did not know what candidate they would support. McCain’s big margin was not necessarily good news for the presumptive GOP candidate, since President Bush at this point four years ago was winning 69% (and, according to exit polls, took 78% in the end).
The bottom line is that neither Obama nor McCain is where they'd hope to be among this important voting bloc. And both are courting it heavily –- Obama with his recent speech endorsing government funding for faith-based social service agencies and McCain through his support for a California measure to ban same-sex marriage.
-- Peter Wallsten
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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