Poor Polling: We have no idea how many evangelicals voted for Democrats
Update after Michigan (January 16, 2008):
See Ted Olsen's update about the continue disparate polling in the Michigan primary and also the letter written by evangelical leaders to the media regarding polling.
See also the Relevant Magazine survey results (Relevant Magazine is a magazine targeted toward what I would call "evangelical" young adults). Here is one of the questions:
Who would Jesus vote for?
Barack Obama
28.7% 284
Dennis Kucinich
2.8% 28
Mike Gravel
0.2% 2
John Edwards
4.7% 46
Joe Biden
1.4% 14
Hillary Clinton
1.8% 18
Mike Huckabee
24.2% 239
Rudy Giuliani
4.3% 43
Fred Thompson
6.0% 59
Ron Paul
15.6% 154
Mitt Romney
3.7% 37
John McCain
6.6% 65
Update after New Hampshire (January 9, 2008):
Ted Olsen has a great update about the new and improved polling. Yeah! See that post at Christianity Today's LiveBlog: New Hampshire: The polling gets better - After Iowa omission, Democrats are finally asked about religion.
Original post after Iowa (January 4, 2008):
How many evangelicals voted for Democrats in Iowa? We'll never know. And if things don't change, we won't know in future primaries either.
Iowa has many evangelicals. Many more Democrats (239,000) voted than Republicans (112,000). But the press is making a big deal about how most evangelicals picked Mike Huckabee. This is based on polling of only Republicans. If there are many evangelicals in Iowa and twice as many Iowans voted for a Democrat, then probably many evangelicals voted for Democrats. (In an informal poll at Christianity Today, Obama only trails Huckabee). But we'll never know how many evangelicals voted for Democrats because all of the media organizations use the same polling data and the pollsters didn't ask Democratic voters anything about their religion.
It seems that Edison Media Research and Mitofsky Interational is doing the entrance/exit polls for all of the primaries for all of the major news organizations. Here is a quote on the Edison site:
"In partnership with Mitofsky International, Edison currently conducts all exit polls and provides election projections and analysis for ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and the Associated Press." No wonder all of the headlines today sound the same. They are all relying on the same very limited data!
Edison/Mitofsky asked very different questions to the Republican and Democratic voters. The results are at the New York Times website. The exact same results are at CNN's website: Republican results, Democratic results. No questions about religious preferences were asked of Democratic voters while two questions were asked of Republican voters.
Worse, if things don't change in the polling, we won't know for any information about the religious preferences of voters for the other primaries either because Edison/Mitofsky is the only one doing polling for all of those primaries as well.
The media organizations should demand better from Edison/Mitofsky.
Related:
- See Ted Olsen's excellent summary of the stories about Evangelicals impact at the flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today's Liveblog "Those Iowan evangelicals."
- I have a few other things related to 2008 election at my Politics category.
- New Testament professor and emerging church and megachurch apologist Scot McKnight's readers at Jesus Creed weigh in with their thoughts. Many of them like Obama.
- Pastor and emerging church leader Doug Pagitt likes the other Democratic candidates except for Edwards better than Obama.
- Conservative media commentator Michael Medved gives some thoughts about the numbers as well in Stop Lying about Huckabee and Evangelicals.
- Steve Knight, emerging church leader, likes Obama.
- Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and World Magazine founder Marvin Olasky rejoice in the evangelical muscle behind Huckabee though Olasky hints of John McCain being the main beneficiary.
- Southern (Baptist) Seminary president Al Mohler, South Carolina megachurch pastor Perry Noble, and Soujourners leader Jim Wallis comment more generally on the political process and a Christian perspective on it.
Huh. Good insight on the polling contracts. Can totally believe that the religious questions are only going to the republican voters. Heck, until he got more notice recently, in the debates, Huckabee wasn't asked policy questions - mostly whether he believed the Bible or evolution. Iraq? Taxes? Just heard those from him recently because nobody has cared to listen.
Obama's next test is South Carolina... the "is he black enough" test as some are calling it.
(Found you off your comment on Scot McKnights' blog)
Posted by:Chris Ridgeway | January 05, 2008 at 12:39 PM