Beliefnet did a survey of religious voters and one the more intriguing results are the relative priorities of Evangelicals that supported Obama vs. Evangelicals that supported McCain.
I culled out "issues" that weren't issues like running mates and then compared it to what Americans as a whole did from an Opinion Dynamics poll just before the election.
Not surprisingly Obama evangelicals were much more in touch with the American people.
More after the fold.
First the priorities of the McCain Evangelicals:
- Abortion
- Cleaning Up Government
- Fighting Islamic Radicalism
- Gay Marriage
- The Economy
- The Iraq War
- Illegal Immigration
- Access to Health Care
- Reducing Poverty
- The Environment
Now the Obama Evangelicals:
- The Economy
- The Iraq War
- Reducing Poverty
- The Environment
- Cleaning Up Government
- Access to Health Care
- Gay Marriage
- Abortion
- Fighting Islamic Radicalism
- Illegal Immigration
The American people prioritized in four clusters. The biggest "cluster" was -- surprise, surprise -- the economy at 40%. The next cluster at around 7-9% was terrorism, health care, and the war in Iraq. The next cluster around 6% was government corruption and abortion. Dead last was illegal immigration.
One thing of note is the high priority of poverty and environment for the Obama evangelicals. This is not surprising since this is the hallmark of young evangelicals. Since this was not a choice on the surveys I've looked at it's hard to tell where that would fit in. The fact that the presumably older evangelicals treated these priorities dead last is interesting.
The McCain evangelicals are completely out of touch. What the economy as number 5 and after gay marriage and abortion? Illegal immigration more important than health care? Yeah, riiiight.