Center for Social Research

Note from CSR Director, James Penning

The 2008 presidential election was all about the economy, right?

Not so fast.

In a recently published book, The Disappearing God Gap? Religion and the 2008 Presidential Election (Oxford University Press, 2010), five scholarly colleagues and I challenge this assumption.

The key finding of the book is that religion mattered greatly in that election. While voting patterns among various religious groups did not differ markedly from patterns found in other recent presidential elections, religious groups were certainly forces to be reckoned with in 2008. Once again, conservative, evangelical Protestants proved to be a key, perhaps the key, component of the G.O.P. voting bloc. The predicted shift of evangelicals from Republican to Democrat support was modest at best. On the other hand, Barack Obama and the Democrats fared exceedingly well among the nation’s large and growing groups of Hispanic Protestants and Catholics.

Analysis included in Religion and the 2008 Presidential Election was primarily based on data collected in two national telephone surveys of adult Americans conducted in English and Spanish both before and after the 2008 presidential election. Funding was provided by the Bradley Foundation, and the research team was led by Dr. Corwin Smidt of The Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics. A preliminary analysis of our data was provided in a press conference held in Washington D.C. at the National Press Club and aired over C-SPAN.

Please feel free to contact me (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) if you have any comments or questions about the book.

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