Recently in Exit Polls Category

Pre-election polls come and go, and obsessed as we are with them, they matter little when all is said and done. But exit polls are something else entirely, both for historians and political scientists assessing the significance of elections and for politicians and their minions planning for the future. Think, in recent years, of the amount of attention given the God Gap or the 2004 "Moral Values" vote. So as the polls close tonight, the exit polls will be on display for instant analysis; I expect to be doing a bit of it myself. I am, however, more aware than ever of the caveats. Here are three.

1. Exit polls in the absence of actual vote totals reflect guesswork on what particular precincts are worth in terms of the total vote. When the totals are in, the exit polls are then adjusted to reflect the actual vote. In an election like the present one, where there are major imponderables (the turnout among younger voters and African Americans foremost among them), the guesswork is more than usually difficult. So initial indications of the voting patterns of various groups, including religious ones, will need to be taken with a major grain of salt.

2. Exit poll calculations this year are further complicated by the large number of voters--perhaps one-third of the total--who have cast their votes early. The pollsters are doing surveying of these voters, but integrating a survey of voters who say they've voted into an exit poll is not an easy thing.

3. Our new American Religious Identification Survey raises problems with assessing the evangelical vote. It turns out that nearly 40 percent of Mainline Protestants (identified by denomination) and 15 percent of Catholics answer yes to the standard exit poll/survey approach to identifying evangelicals: "Do you consider yourself an evangelical or born-again Christian?" Nationwide, that's maybe one-third of the voters who answer yes, but we don't know yet how these "evangelicals" are distributed regionally or state-by-state. There are many things to weigh here but one is: In places the Midwest, where there's a large proportion of mainliners, it may be that indications of a greater tendency of "evangelicals" to prefer Obama just reflect a mainline propensity.

Bottom line: Any immediate conclusions drawn from the exit polls have to be considered highly provisional. It's going to take a while to get this sorted out.

The first-take exit polls show Obama winning all attendance categories except weekly (more-than-weekly not large enough to register)--which is to say, he got the less religiously observant. He lost the Protestants sans Other Christians by a few points, but when combined, won them. He did much better among Catholics and Other Christians than among Protestants alone. He did best by far among those with no religion--19 percent of the voters--pulling 72 percent to Clinton's 22 percent. Montana has nearly twice as many of these religious "Nones" as South Dakota, and in South Dakota he won that group by only eight percentage points, not 50. That's a big part of the difference in the two primary results right there.

It's becoming clear to me that one of the reasons Obama is doing as well as he is in the West is that it is that region of the country with the lowest rates of religious affiliation and identity. From the vantage point of, say, Connecticut, Montana and South Dakota might seem almost of a piece, contiguous and oblong and up there as they are. But whereas (according to the North American Religion Atlas) Montana has one of the country's higher rates of religiously unaffiliated and uncounted at 53 percent of the population, South Dakota has one the lowest, at 30 percent. In this respect, Montana is a true Western state, while South Dakota is upper Midwest all the way

There's been some recent journalism about the fight for the West between Obama and McCain, and McCain here has the advantage of coming from Arizona. But he's got the GOP-evangelical alliance wrapped around his neck. And the more he tries to nail down his lukewarm evangelical base, the more he stands to alienate his secular fellow Westerners.

No one has called Wisconsin yet on the Democratic side, but the exit polls look very good for Obama. Of particular note, he came within a few points of splitting the Catholic vote (48 percent to 51 percent for Clinton). That can't help but bode well for him in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Commentaries on the religious data from all available exit polls are finally posted (except Florida, which will be up tomorrow). Just click on the Exit Poll Commentary link under State by State to the left, and select the state of your choice. You'll find a pie chart with the religious layout of each state, a summary of the caucus/primary results, and links to the full exit poll, if such exists. Comments and corrections welcome--use this post to do so. Your editor will make such adjustments as seem warranted. Enjoy!

So what happened religiously in Louisiana yesterday? In the black-white affair on the Democratic side, the only attendance category that Clinton won was the Nevers—the six percent of the Democratic vote who said they never go to chruch--who split for her 56 percent to 44 percent. Not a big deal. Obama did win the Catholic vote, 51 percent to 43 percent, but that was thanks to the large number of black Catholics in the state. White Catholics voters went for Clinton by a margin of 62 percent to 29 percent, a margin larger than the margin by which white Protestants voted for her (54 percent to 29 percent).

There were no surprises on the GOP side. Huckabee outstripped McCain among those who said they attend church more than-weekly by better than two-to-one. In all other attendance categories, McCain prevailed. Huckabee got the evangelicals, McCain the non-evangelicals (56 percent and 54 percent respectively). Likewise, Huckabee got the Protestants (52 percent) and McCain the Catholics (55 percent). But there were twice as many Protestants as Catholics, so Huckabee squeaked through.

This is to let you know that commentary on the religious dimensions of the Super Tuesday voting is proceeding with all deliberate speed alphabetically, and has now reached Arkansas. You can reach it via the "Exit Poll Commentary" link under the State by State heading on the right-hand column.

If any Super Tuesday state can be considered an upset win for Obama, it was Connecticut, where he was down double digits in the polls just a few weeks ago and came out on top by 51 percent to 47 percent. In today's Hartford Courant, Mark Pazniokas has this secular account of how the Illinois senator did it. But there's a religious back story.

As was the case just about everywhere else in the country, Obama had a major problem with Catholics, losing them by a margin of 59 percent to 39 percent—and Catholics constituted 42 percent of the Democratic vote. This Catholic gap was, however, more than offset by Obama’s success in every other category—62 percent of the Protestants (including 55 Percent of white Protestants), 61 percent of the Jews, and 67 percent of religious “others” (Hindus, Buddhists, etc. though not Muslims). Interestingly, those with no religion divided pretty evenly, 52 percent to 47 percent for Obama--a smaller margin than he won this group by in a number of other states.

The Jewish vote in Connecticut is particularly noteworthy, given the strong preference of Jews for Clinton in New York, New Jersey, California, and (earlier) in Florida. Jews in Massachusetts broke for Obama as well, though much less strongly. Was this a New England thing? Perhaps it is not out of place to mention that the largest concentration of Jews in Connecticut is to be found on the north side of West Hartford, in close and pretty harmonious proximity to the largest concentration of African Americans in Connecticut, in the north end of Hartford and in Bloomfield. Let us also bear in mind that nowhere in the country is there a larger concentration of members of the United Church of Christ, the Mainline Protestant denomination of which Obama is a member—and whose annual convention he addressed in Hartford last summer.

The following is from my favorite informant on the doings of Christian conservatives in Georgia, a person I refer to as the Last Democrat in her suburban Atlanta church.

I guess you saw last night the big voter turnout for Huckabee in GA – fueled by his non-stop appearances in white evangelical pulpits the last couple of months, appearances with Sonny Perdue, constant promotion by right-wing talk radio blabber Neal Boortz with WSB here in Atlanta with that “fair tax” baloney, etc. He was at a rally this weekend with the “GA Christian Alliance” (changed name after the national Christian Coalition kicked them out a couple of years ago because the GA bunch was too over the top for even them!) and that ding-bat Sadie Fields (an old Ralph Reed protégé who took over in GA after he came out of the lobbyist closet a few years back). And yes, my church was telling people to go vote for Huckabee this past Sunday, just like tons of others.

On Super Tuesday, John McCain benefited greatly from winner-take-all primaries in big states, but he also assembled the broad religious coalition that characterized his previous victories. California is a good example: he won the unaffiliated (43%) and white Catholics (40%), broke even with Romney among white Protestants (37%), and finished second among white evangelical Protestants (29%). He also racked up big wins among Latinos and Asians. Similar patterns appeared in the McCain vote New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Illinois.

On Super Tuesday, Mike Huckabee won four Southern states with a strong evangelical vote: Alabama (51% of the white born again Protestant vote), Georgia (45%), and Tennessee (43%), plus his home state of Arkansas. Evangelical votes also allowed him to closely contest Missouri (44%) and Oklahoma (39%). These figures resemble Huckabee’s showing in Iowa, among evangelicals and overall. However, Huckabee did not broaden his support by very much, even in the states he won. This pattern hurt him in other parts of the country, where evangelicals were less numerous and less supportive of his candidacy.

A similar pattern appeared in Barack Obama’s vote as well: he won Alabama and Georgia on basis of a strong black vote, especially from black Protestants. Although Obama won the black vote everywhere, it was not large enough to carry him to victory-- even in other southern states like Tennessee and Oklahoma. Indeed, Obama had trouble expanding his support among other religious groups, for the most part losing white Catholics, white Protestants, and Hispanics to Hillary Clinton. Obama continued his special to appeal among younger voters, and perhaps as a consequence won the unaffiliated and other religious minorities.

The bedrock of the Clinton vote continued to be white Catholics: 71% in New Jersey, 68% in California, and 67% in Massachusetts. It was Catholic votes that allowed her to overcome Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama in the Bay State. Minority Catholics swelled Clinton’s totals everywhere.

On the Republican side, Romney’s Mormon supporters were crucial to his success in the Mountain west. And John McCain continued to be the choice of the less observant Republican minority across the country.