Considering the hype about all the young people supporting Obama, I thought this Pew study was pretty surprising - Obama actually has the same support among white evangelicals right now as Kerry in 2004 or Gore in 2000 (he’s polling a bit behind the other two, but this is well within the margin of error). Granted, McCain has less support than Bush did in either election, and the undecideds might well end up going Obama’s way, but still… It seems to me that we’re a little misled when the buzz I hear everywhere makes it sound as if evangelicals are making a mass exodus from Republicanism and are going to carry Obama into office. I wonder if Obama is really appealing to more evangelicals, or if that just fits the media narrative better and a lot more evangelicals are in fact burnt out on being in bed with the Republican party and left somewhere in no-man’s-land, too busy hiding from falling shells to decide which side of the trench they’d rather be shooting from.
Just a note: At this point I’m far from supporting either candidate. I believe I pointed out a while back that I thought the current partisan decision amounted to deciding whether Jesus would rather we kill babies or Arabs, and I largely still feel that way about the whole process.
(HT: Mollie Hemingway via JT)