Republicans, Evangelicals, Gays and Abortion - NYTimes.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/opinion/frank-bruni-republicans-ev...

Another presidential campaign is taking shape, and potential Republican candidates

are beginning to speak with extra care and sometimes with censorious hellfire
about certain social issues. As ever, theyre bowing to a bloc of voters described as
Christian conservatives.
But these voters are a minority of Christians. Theyre not such representative
conservatives.
They have a disproportionate sway over the Republican Party. And because of
that, they have an outsize influence on the national debate.
Thats an inescapable takeaway from new data compiled by the Public Religion
Research Institute, a nonpartisan group that interviewed more than 50,000
Americans last year.
To put together what it is calling the American Values Atlas, the institute divided
survey respondents into more than a dozen faith-related categories, some of which
factored racial identity into the equation as well. White evangelical Protestants and
black Protestants are separate groups, as are white Catholics and Hispanic Catholics.
The institute looked at three issues: gay marriage, abortion and immigration.
It gave me a sneak peek at the results, being released in full on Wednesday, and
also did some special analyses.
Among religious groups with large populations, white evangelical Protestants,
who represent 18 percent of all Americans but 36 percent of self-identified
Republicans, according to the survey, stood out as the most conservative.
If you looked at the responses of all Republicans minus this evangelical subset,

3/7/2015 9:57 AM

Republicans, Evangelicals, Gays and Abortion - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/opinion/frank-bruni-republicans-ev...

you saw a remarkably different party.

Among all Republicans, 35 percent favored the legalization of gay marriage,
while 58 percent opposed it. But subtract the white evangelicals and the spread
changes: 45 to 47. The party becomes almost evenly divided, in bold contrast to the
decidedly negative stance that most Republican congressional leaders take.
Just 39 percent of all Republicans said that abortion should be legal in all or
most cases, while 58 percent said that it shouldnt. Subtract the white evangelicals
and again theres another nearly even split: 48 to 49 percent. So the partys
anti-choice ardor makes sense chiefly in terms of evangelicals.
In fact Republican voters who arent evangelical are probably even more socially
liberal than those even-split numbers suggest, because the institutes survey counted
as Republican or Democrat only those respondents who readily identified themselves
that way. It didnt press others on whether they typically voted for one party, so the
share of voters it categorized as independent was unusually large: 40 percent. In
other words, its Republicans were the most committed Republicans.
If you added in independents who lean Republican, you would expect to see the
support for same-sex marriage and the support for abortion rise, precisely because
they tend to be less ideologically oriented, Robert Jones, the head of the institute,
told me.
And youd see that white evangelical Protestants tend to be outliers today on
issues like same-sex marriage, he said. He added that in the 1980s, when Jerry
Falwell and others referred to white evangelical Protestants as part of a moral
majority, the designation was overblown but perhaps arguable.
Today, on these key, bellwether issues like same-sex marriage, its no longer
true, Jones said.
While 55 percent of all Americans, 52 percent of white Catholics and 42 percent
of Hispanic Catholics said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, just 32
percent of white evangelical Protestants responded that way.
In terms of allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, 77 percent of Jews and at
least 60 percent of all three Catholic subgroups white Catholics, Hispanic Catholics
and other non-white Catholics said they favored it. So did more than 60 percent
of white mainline Protestants.
But white evangelical Protestants?
Just 28 percent.

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Republicans, Evangelicals, Gays and Abortion - NYTimes.com

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/opinion/frank-bruni-republicans-ev...

According to the survey, there are just seven American states Alabama,
Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky
where more than 50 percent of voters oppose gay marriage.
All of them have white evangelical Protestant populations of one-third or
more, Jones told me. Theres basically a linear relationship between the number of
white evangelical Protestants and opposition to same-sex marriage.
And when survey respondents were asked whether immigrants strengthen the
U.S. or are a burden, the only religious group in which fewer people said
strengthen than burden was white evangelical Protestants. The spread was 36 to
53 percent.
Among all Americans, the spread was the opposite, with 55 percent saying
strengthen and 36 saying burden.
The conversation on Capitol Hill doesnt exactly reflect that. Instead it suggests,
accurately, that some voters voices are louder than others, and are better heard.

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