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A Closer Look at "Values Voters"

October 19, 2007 1:52 PM

Today’s “values voters” conference in Washington is putting political attention back on evangelical white Protestants and their role in the Republican presidential contest. Here's a look at the data.

As we’ve reported, given his position on abortion and gay civil unions, Rudy Giuliani’s support for the nomination is considerably weaker among evangelicals as compared with other Republicans. Among non-evangelical Republicans (we're including Republican-leaning independents), Giuliani has nearly triple the support of his closest competitor, Fred Thompson. Among evangelicals, they’re tied.

                             Giuliani  Thompson  McCain  Romney
Evangelical
   white Protestants    23%         22           13          8
All other
   leaned Republicans   38          14           12         12

Note also that Mitt Romney is unappealing to Republican evangelicals, owning apparently to his Mormon religion. Indeed 32 percent of evangelicals say they’d definitely not support Romney, vs. 23 percent who say that of Thompson, John McCain 22, Giuliani 14.

Yes – Republican evangelicals are less likely to flatly rule out Giuliani than any of the other top contenders. But he does have a tough row to hoe: In a poll we did in June, 75 percent of evangelical Republicans (vs. 42 percent of other Republicans) said Giuliani’s support for legal abortion and gay civil unions made them “less likely” to support him. The question is whether they find a preferable alternative.

TERMS – The phrase “values voters” reflects political branding that we should approach with caution. All voters have values. For some those values are expressed as opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and stem-cell research. Others’ values are expressed as support for those same things. For yet others, “values” means hunger, homelessness, poverty or a host of other concerns. No one type of voter possesses “values” to the exclusion of others.

What the phrase really refers to is evangelical white Protestants, a core Republican group whose members, to a degree fairly unique in American society, conflate their religious beliefs and political views. The phrase “conservative Christian” sometimes is used, but it’s inapt; what distinguishes people in this group is not just their conservatism, and not their Christianity, but their evangelicalism.

In terms of the size of the group: Twenty-one percent of voters in the 2004 presidential election were evangelical white Protestants (including other non-Catholic, non-Mormon Christians). Naturally, they account for a greater share of turnout in Republican primaries.

GENERAL ELECTION – While overwhelmingly Republican, evangelical white Protestants are not a monolithic group; 21 percent of them voted for John Kerry in 2004. Nor are they a single-issue or absolutist group. In a general election matchup against Hillary Clinton, Giuliani is supported by 69 percent of evangelical white Protestants; few (five percent) volunteer that they wouldn’t support either.

Giuliani’s current support in this group is somewhat (nine points) short of George W. Bush’s 78 percent in 2004, but still a sizable majority. (Turnout does remain an issue – whether evangelicals would be de-motivated by a Giuliani candidacy and stay home; or anti-motivated by a Clinton candidacy and turn out.)

                             Clinton   Giuliani   Bush ‘04
Evangelical
  white Protestants     26%         69         78%

ISSUES – Republican evangelicals are not vastly different from other Republicans in picking the most important issue in their vote. See the table below, from our early September poll; note that nine percent of evangelical Republicans picked either abortion or an issue relating to values or morality as their top issue, vs. 20 percent who cited the war in Iraq, 12 percent health care, 11 percent terrorism or national security, 10 percent the economy, 10 percent ethics or honesty in government, eight percent immigration.

         Most important issue - among leaned Republicans
                                9/7/2007      
                        Evang. white    All
                         Protestants    others
Iraq/War in Iraq         20%          28
Health care                12              8
Terrorism/security     11            12
Economy/jobs            10            14
Ethics/honesty/
  corruption               10               8
Immigration                8               7
Morals/family values   5               3
Abortion                     4               0
Education                    2              *
Federal deficit             1              0
Housing/mortgages     1              0
Other                          6              7
No opinion                 10            13

Specifically on abortion, a minority of evangelical Republicans, 36 percent, take the absolute position that it should be illegal in all cases. An additional 46 percent say it should be illegal in “most cases,” for a (very large) net of 82 percent, compared to a net of 50 percent among all other leaned Republicans.

Also relevant here is a result from a poll question we asked in 2004: Fifty-five percent of all evangelical white Protestants said they could vote for a presidential candidate even if they disagreed with him on the abortion issue; 45 percent said they could not.

RELIGIOUS – Ultimately what probably most distinguishes evangelicals is their response to a question we last asked in October 2006: Do you think a political leader should or should not rely on his or her religious beliefs in making policy decisions? Among all Americans, 35 percent said a political leader should rely on his or her religious beliefs; 61 percent, should not.

Among evangelical white Protestants those numbers were almost precisely reversed, 66-33 percent.

October 19, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Battle of the Sexes, News of the Day

October 18, 2007 1:13 PM

Clinton strategist Mark Penn fired an early volley in the battle of the sexes this morning, boasting at a breakfast with reporters that in a general election Hillary Clinton would win 24 percent of Republican women. Is that a shot across the GOP bow – or a puff of campaign smoke?

More of the latter, given our data.

In a head-to-head matchup against Rudy Giuliani in the latest ABC/Post poll, Clinton attracts 11 percent of Republican women – and an almost identical number of Republican men. No gender gap there, nor anything unusual. It’s customary for a small share of each party's loyalists to defect - around six to 13 percent, men and women alike - depending on the candidates' comparative attractiveness. (It can go higher in the case of a particularly lopsided race, and in the past Democrats, rather than Republicans, have been more vulnerable to defections – notably the Reagan Democrats of 1980 and ’84.)

Another way to look at the subject, which Penn may be less likely to raise, is the fact that Clinton's current advantage over Giuliani relies on self-described feminists. Among Americans who say they are not feminists (three-quarters of the public), Clinton and Giuliani run about evenly – 46 percent to 48 percent in our latest poll. Among feminists – 22 percent of the public overall, including 18 percent of men as well as 26 percent of women - it's a whopping 64-30 percent for Clinton.

Slicing the data directly by sex shows that Clinton owes her lead over Giuliani to women - Giuliani a scant +3 among men, Clinton +18 among women. And Clinton is notably competitive among married women (48-47 percent), a group central to George W. Bush's re-election; he won 55 percent of them in 2004.

But for her to get a quarter of Republican women is awfully hard to see, and certainly not supported by our current data. (Unless Penn is using a particularly expansive definition of Republican women, e.g., including some number of independents who lean toward the Republican Party.) In a predictive model, sex is a stronger factor that feminism in predicting vote preferences - but, as usual, neither comes remotely close to the strength of political party identification.

Penn might just be trying to rattle the Republicans, hardly unheard of in election politics. On the other hand, as the political battle of the sexes is sure to rage on in the months ahead, there’s the wisdom of Winston Churchill to keep in mind: "There is nothing so exhilarating," he wrote, "as being shot at with no result.”

Meanwhile… we’ve got some other data points to support the news of the day. Among them:

Goodbye to Brownback?

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback reportedly plans to drop out of the 2008 presidential campaign Friday. It’s hardly a shock: Brownback’s support hasn’t exceeded the low single-digits nationally nor in any individual state, save his home state of Kansas, where he ran evenly with Mitt Romney in a survey last May. In early states, his latest showings were two percent support in Iowa, less than one percent in New Hampshire and one percent in South Carolina.

The “Real Conservative”

Fred Thompson, meanwhile, is rolling out internet ads declaring he’s the “real conservative” of the Republican presidential candidates.  It makes sense: Conservatives are potentially fertile ground for Thompson, given doubts about Giuliani and John McCain alike in some core Republican groups.

In our most recent ABC/Post poll, Thompson was supported for the nomination by 22 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning conservatives - second to Giuliani - vs. 11 percent of moderates and the few liberal Republicans, running fourth in that group.

Moreover, 29 percent of conservative Republicans say Thompson "best reflects the core values of the Republican Party," vs. 25 percent for McCain and just 18 percent for Giuliani. And Thompson approaches Giuliani among conservatives in trust to handle immigration (24 percent to 32 percent), a hot-button issue in the GOP base.

The Tennessean is clearly seizing on what he sees as an opportunity within his party.

Chemical Ali: Retribution vs. Reconciliation

However satisfying it may be to families of his victims, the apparently imminent execution of Ali Hassan al-Majid, a.k.a. Chemical Ali, hardly looks helpful in terms of resolution of the sectarian divisions ripping through Iraq. Majid, Iraq’s former defense minister, has been convicted of ordering poison gas attacks against Kurdish civilians the 1980s.

If Saddam Hussein’s execution offers any insight, the same punishment for Majid may only further divide Iraqis. The national poll in Iraq we conducted last March found vast sectarian differences in views of Saddam's execution: Sixty-two percent of Shiite Arabs said it was helpful in bringing about reconciliation in their country, but 96 percent of Sunni Arabs said the opposite – that it only made reconciliation more difficult.

Here's the result:

Do you believe the execution of Saddam Hussein was helpful in bringing about reconciliation in Iraq, or do you think it made reconciliation more difficult?

3/5/07                Made more       No   
             Helpful     difficult     effect (vol.)
All            36%          53              12    
Sunni         2            96                1      
Shiite       62            25              14      
Kurdish     33           39               27      

.. and S-CHIP

Finally, there’s the question of the House’s failure today – by 13 votes – to override President Bush’s veto of a $35 billion increase in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Our poll found broad (72 percent) and strong support for the increase – making this the president’s least popular veto (majorities, but smaller ones, supported expanded federal funding for stem-cell research and a deadline for withdrawing for Iraq, his two previous vetos).

It’s hard not to support children’s health, and data from Gallup suggest views on the issue may be movable to the extent that it's debated more on income eligibility or “socialized medicine” grounds. Still, in our data, even 61 percent of Republicans supported expanding S-CHIP – which may help explain why 44 Republicans in Congress bucked the White House and voted in favor of the failed override.

October 18, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

President Bush: Where He's At

October 17, 2007 10:19 AM

For internal guidance at ABC News we regularly summarize poll results related to breaking news events, such as the president’s news conference this morning. Here's today’s summary, running down the president’s ratings – a handy sketch of where he’s at.

-Still burdened by the unpopular war in Iraq, President Bush has a 33 percent job approval rating in the latest ABC/Post poll (two weeks ago), matching his career low. (Gallup’s latest, earlier this week, was essentially the same, 32 percent.) Sixty-four percent disapprove. Bush’s rating has been quite stable, ranging from 33 to 36 percent approval in every ABC/Post poll this year.

-Fifty-nine percent say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, down from its peak of 66 percent in April but a majority continuously since December 2004. It remains the elephant in the political room, regardless of the president's apparent intention to focus on domestic issues this morning.

-Bush has had less-than-majority approval continuously for 34 months. Only one previous postwar president was this low for this long, Harry Truman, for 38 months from 1949 to 1952. No others have even come close (Johnson, 18 months; Nixon, 16). Nonetheless three other presidents have hit lower lows – Truman, Nixon and Carter saw ratings in the 20s.

-Intensity of sentiment also is against Bush. Just 15 percent “strongly” approve of his work in office; more than three times as many, 49 percent, strongly disapprove.

-Just 30 percent approve of Bush’s work on Iraq, two points from his career low. Even on the broader U.S. campaign against terrorism, long his cornerstone issue, just 40 percent approve – a new low. He gets just 37 percent approval on handling the economy, 30 percent on health care, 27 percent on the deficit.

-For the past four years Bush’s ratings have been more partisan (a bigger gap between Republicans and Democrats) than for any of the previous three presidents (Clinton, GHW Bush, Reagan).

-Bush’s problems impact his party: He’s presided over a significant decline in Republican Party allegiance. On average in our polls this year just 25 percent of Americans have identified themselves as Republicans, down from 31 percent in 2003 to the fewest since 1984.

-Big majorities oppose his SCHIP veto and favor a reduction in his war-funding request. (Gallup data suggest some movability on SCHIP if the message can be shifted away from children’s health and toward “socialized medicine.”)

-Misery loves company: Approval of Congress overall has fallen from 44 percent in April to 29 percent now, even lower than Bush. The Republicans in Congress have 29 percent approval, the Democrats, 38 percent.

See our coverage of the news conference here.

October 17, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Al Gore's Campaign: Turning up the Heat

October 12, 2007 9:46 AM

For a guy committed to combating climate change, Al Gore’s plans for his prizewinnings make good sense.

Gore this morning said he’ll donate his share of the Nobel Peace Prize to an outfit “devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.” That suggests Gore believes public opinion isn’t quite up to speed on the issue – and from his perspective, he’s right.

On one hand, public concern about climate change has soared: In a poll we did last spring, 33 percent of Americans volunteered it as the world’s biggest environmental problem, the top mention by far and double what it was a year earlier. The related issue of air pollution was second, with all other answers in the single digits.   

However, fewer than half said they believe global warming is caused mostly by human activity (albeit up 10 points from a year earlier, to 41 percent); 56 percent said they believe there’s still substantial scientific disagreement on whether it’s occurring (down eight points, but still a majority); and just a narrow majority, 52 percent, said it was extremely or very important to them personally.

Other results, similarly, show levels of alarm below Gore’s own. The poll found broad agreement (86 percent) that global warming will be a serious problem if nothing is done to reduce it – but fewer, 57 percent, saw it as “very” serious. And only about a quarter thought a “great deal” in fact can be done to reduce global warming and its effects on people and the environment. (Still, seven in 10 thought the federal government should be doing more than it’s doing now to try to address the issue.)

Elsewhere, a Pew Global Attitudes poll in 37 countries last spring found concern about pollution and the environment up in 20 of them, and majorities in 25 calling global warming a very serious problem – but not in some especially populous places, such as China (where just 42 percent, in an urban-only sample, called it very serious) Russia (40 percent) and Indonesia (43 percent); it was just 45 percent in Great Britain. (Compare these to Japan, where 78 percent called it very serious, and Brazil, 88 percent. Gore needn’t advertise there.)

What ultimately could move public opinion on the issue may not be so much whether scientists are seen to agree about it, or whether Gore’s group itself can change public attitudes, but personal experience. Forty-one percent of Americans in our poll last spring said average temperatures in their area seem to have been going up lately; more, 54 percent, said overall weather patterns where they live have been “more unstable.” To the extent that these experiences evolve, public attitudes well may follow.

There is, as well, a political aspect to all this – Republicans are far more apt to be skeptical about climate change, and the Nobel for Gore may not be exactly what it takes to persuade them.

As far as Gore himself, the Nobel naturally boosts speculation about his possible presidential ambitions. But winning prizes and winning votes are different things. The Oscar for his climate change movie last winter didn’t materially change Gore’s support for the Democratic nomination for president. In the latest polling he’s at about 10 percent support – well back from Hillary Clinton, who was prompt this morning in congratulating the former vice president.

(Also see our coverage of Gore's Nobel prize on our politics page.)

October 12, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)