Moral Values won the election......maybe not.

Since the election, not a day has gone by where someone in the media is talking/writing about the strength of the evangelical voters and the debt Bush owes them.

However, Rick Perlstein, in a Village Voice article, points to election results that prove otherwise.

Pundits blow hot air. Political scientists crunch numbers. On his blog Polysigh, my favorite political scientist, Phil Klinkner, ran a simple exercise. Multiplying the turnout among a certain group by the percent who went for Bush yields a number electoral statisticians call "performance." Among heavy churchgoers, Bush's performance last time was 25 percent (turnout, 42 percent; percentage of vote, 59 percent). This time out it was also 25 percent—no change. Slightly lower turnout (41 percent), slightly higher rate of vote (61 percent).

Where did the lion's share of the extra votes come from that gave George Bush his mighty, mighty mandate of 51 percent? "Two of those points," Klinkner said when reached by phone, "came solely from people making over a 100 grand." The people who won the election for him—his only significant improvement over his performance four years ago—were rich people, voting for more right-wing class warfare.

Their portion of the electorate went from 15 percent in 2000 to 18 percent this year. Support for Bush among them went from 54 percent to 58 percent.

A voice is starting to rise that says we shouldn't give the religious right the power we are by saying they won the election for Bush. I agree that they were a force. But not the only force in this election. I think this also shows that gay marriage wasn't the force as an issue we originally thought.




Here is the original article at Polysigh