An analysis of newly released exit poll data by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that Obama succeeded in attracting a larger share of the vote from some religious groups than the 2004 Democratic nominee, John Kerry, had received. Among white evangelical Protestants, for example, Obama picked up 5 percentage points more support than Kerry (26% vs. 21%). And Obama’s gains were particularly large among white evangelical Protestants younger than the age of 40. He received 33% of their votes, compared with 12% for Kerry four years earlier.

In general, however, the contours of religion and politics were the same in 2008 as in 2004. Religion remained a very strong predictor of voters’ choices, and the large gaps in the electorate that had developed along religious lines in earlier elections persisted in 2008. Some of Obama’s largest gains, in fact, were among religious groups that already leaned Democratic, such as black Protestants and religiously unaffiliated voters (those who answer “none” when asked about their religious affiliation in exit polls).

Among the most religiously observant Americans — those who say they attend worship services more than once a week (12% of the total electorate in 2008) — Obama received 43% of the vote, up from 35% for Kerry. But all of Obama’s 8-point improvement among these very frequent churchgoers came from minorities, who voted Democratic in 2008 by even larger margins than in 2004.

One group that moved strongly in the Democratic direction after having voted Republican in 2004 was Hispanic, Asian and other minority Protestants, not including blacks. These voters (about 3% of the total electorate) had backed Bush over Kerry by a 58%-to-39% margin in 2004. In 2008, 56% of this group voted for Obama.

But there was little change among other traditionally Republican and swing-voting religious groups, especially white voters who say they attend religious services at least once a week. Obama received the votes of 41% of observant white Catholics (compared with 39% for Kerry), 38% of observant white mainline Protestants (compared with 42% for Kerry) and 20% of observant white evangelical Protestants (compared with 17% for Kerry). Among all white Christian voters who say they go to church at least once a week, Obama received about the same level of support that Kerry did in 2004 (29% for Obama, 28% for Kerry).

The religious composition of the electorate also remained remarkably stable from 2004 to 2008. The overall stability in the relative sizes of the major religious groups is another way in which the contours of religion and politics remained much the same in 2008 as in 2004.

These conclusions result from an analysis by the Pew Forum of 2008 exit polls conducted by the National Election Pool, a consortium of news organizations consisting of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC News and The Associated Press. The exit poll data were released to the public in May 2010 through the Roper Public Opinion Archives. The newly released data allow a much deeper examination of voting patterns than was previously possible, including breaking the electorate into smaller religious groups and simultaneously taking into account frequency of church attendance, racial or ethnic identity, age, income and other factors. This analysis is based on respondents who were asked religion questions and compares the results with voters who were asked the same questions by the 2004 National Election Pool.

Read the full report at pewforum.org.

Also see the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life new “Religion & Politics 2010” page for more voting trends by religious groups, election news briefs related to religion, resources on religion in America and more Pew Forum reports on the intersection of religion and politics.

John Green, a senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum, discussed how a small change overall in voting behavior among religious groups had a big impact at the ballot box. Green said that the Democrats and Barack Obama made their largest gains among minority religious groups but that Obama made only modest gains among white Christian groups. Although these shifts were enough to put Obama in the White House, they did not change the overall structure of the faith-based vote compared with 2004.

Anna Greenberg, senior vice president for Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, said that Obama’s faith was the main religious narrative of the campaign. But that debate wasn’t necessarily about religion itself, she said, but a stand-in for a conversation about Obama — who he was, where he came from, what values he represented. Another ongoing theme was whether Obama could win votes among the more-conservative religious groups. Greenberg cited polling data showing that younger evangelicals were more likely to support Obama than older evangelicals and that the under-30 set was more progressive on the issues of climate change and gay marriage.

Speakers:
John Green, Senior Fellow in Religion and American Politics, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
Anna Greenberg, Senior Vice President, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research

Moderator:
Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy Center; Senior Advisor, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

In the following edited excerpt, ellipses have been omitted to facilitate reading. Read the full transcript, including follow-up discussion, at pewforum.org.

John Green

JOHN GREEN: The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press typically does a survey the weekend before the election, and then right after the election. I combined those two surveys into a single data set.¹ So we have people right before they voted and right after they voted, giving us 3,000 to 4,000 respondents to work with. Among other things, the combined surveys allow us to look at some small religious groups, which were quite interesting in 2008. They also allow us to look at some other questions not asked in the exit polls. Yet another advantage is that, because our colleagues at the Pew Research Center do these kinds of surveys regularly, we can compare 2008 to a similar combination of pre-election and post-election surveys conducted in 2004.

So, how did the faith factor operate in 2008? There are three points worth making. First is that the basic structure of faith-based politics in the United States was very similar in 2008 and 2004. There was remarkably little change. The change was quite important, of course, but the basic structure was very similar. Second, the Democrats and Barack Obama made their largest gains among various religious “minorities” — groups that can be described as minorities either in ethnic, racial or religious terms — and we’ll look at some of those groups in just a moment. Third, the Democrats made only modest gains among white Christian groups, and we’ll talk about that in a little bit of detail too.

Effect of religion on voting

Before we get into the numbers, though, it’s worth just spending a moment talking about the different pieces of the structure of faith-based politics in the United States, a structure that’s been in operation for more than 20 years. There was a lot of speculation this year that this structure would change. In fact, it didn’t change very much, but it may change in the future. There are three basic pieces to this structure. Religious affiliation — the religious communities to which people belong — is a very important part of the structure of faith-based politics. As in the past, religious affiliation is very closely linked to ethnicity and race. It is worth spending a moment on this linkage in the form of “ethno-religious” groups.

Ethno-religious groups have been important in American politics from the beginning of the republic and some examples are well-known, such as Irish Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians and German Jews. Some of those groups are still important today, but new groups have come on the scene. Thus we have a new version of an old story, with new ethno-religious groups such as Mexican Catholics, Korean Presbyterians and Arab Muslims, where religious affiliation, ethnicity and race are very closely tied together.

But in recent times, religiosity — typically measured in these surveys by frequency of worship attendance — has created new groups within religious affiliations. So whereas once we could talk about “the white Catholic vote,” which was really the European Catholic vote, we really can’t do that anymore because there are huge differences between regular mass-attending and less-observant Roman Catholics. We’ll see some examples of this pattern in the structure.

The effect of religiosity is the strongest in white Christian groups, but you can see it in almost every religious group. When we get the full 2008 exit poll data, I think it would be fun to look and see if these differences by religious attendance show up in all the different groups. In 2004, they did. There wasn’t a single religious group where there weren’t political differences by worship attendance. But the really big differences are among white Christian groups. Anyway, we can define the basic structure of faith-based politics with affiliation, ethnicity/race and attendance.

Let’s look at what the structure looked like in 2008. This picture is a bar graph that lists the key religious groups in order of the Democratic vote — the blue bars are the vote for Obama; the red bars are the vote for McCain. The most Democratic group is at the top of the graph and the least Democratic group, or the most Republican group, is at the bottom. One can see the structure of the faith-based vote at a glance. This picture provides a sense of how polarized American religion was, even in 2008. There were strong Democratic groups, and there were strong Republican groups.

Source: Analysis of aggregated election weekend and post-election callback surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The next bar graph is for 2004. Note how similar the 2008 and 2004 graphs are. There are some differences, of course, but the basic structure was largely intact. What this similarity says to me as a political scientist is that these differences based on religious affiliation and attendance are very deeply embedded in American politics.

Source: Analysis of aggregated election weekend and post-election callback surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Let’s just look at some of the key groups in 2008. Toward the top of the chart, virtually all of the strong Obama groups have this character of being minorities in one form or another. Of course, the first group, black Protestants, has been a strong Democratic group for a long time. In these data they voted nearly 100% for Obama. Of course, part of the black Protestants’ story in 2008 was not just the Democratic margin but the higher turnout, so this is a very important group for Obama. But if you go down the graph, you see Jews, and then a composite group of “Hispanic and other minority Catholics” — this group includes other racial categories such as Asians and individuals of mixed race. It’s interesting because this group was very Democratic in 2008. In the past they’ve tended to be Democratic, but they’ve moved in a more Democratic direction.

Next is the composite category of “Other (non-Christian) faith” — that’s the combination of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and other non-Christian groups. This category was also a very Democratic group in 2008.

Then we come to another very Democratic group: seculars. These are people without a religious affiliation and who gave us no indication that they had any kind of religious belief or behavior. If we skip down a little farther, we come to a related group: the unaffiliated believers. These are people who tell us they don’t have a religious affiliation but show some indication of having religious beliefs and behaviors. They were also a strongly Democratic group, but notice how different they are from the pure seculars, who were even more Democratic.

Then finally we come to a white Christian category, the less-observant white Catholics. These people reported attending worship less than once a week. This group has tended to vote Democratic in the past, but in 2008 they were even more Democratic, though not like the religious minorities. It’s worth looking down the graph and noting how different this group was from Catholics who reported attending mass once a week or more — the less-observant were markedly more Democratic. This difference is a good example of the impact of worship attendance on the vote.

Then we come to a minority group that was more evenly divided. In these data, the composite group of “Hispanic and other minority Protestants” nearly broke evenly between McCain and Obama. But, as some of you may remember, in 2004 Hispanic Protestants voted Republican. So this was a very important shift into the Democratic column in 2008.

Next we get into the groups that voted, on balance, Republican — near the bottom of the chart. Less-observant white mainline Protestants voted for McCain by a slight majority, while weekly attending white mainline Protestants backed McCain by a larger majority. Weekly attending white Catholics also voted Republican, by a still larger majority. And then at the very bottom of the chart are white evangelical Protestants, where both the less-observant and weekly attenders voted solidly Republican. But note that the weekly attenders were markedly more Republican. Indeed, weekly attending white evangelical Protestants were the strongest Republican group in 2008, as in 2004.

Where race was a factor

During the campaign, there was much talk about how race might matter at the polls. Many people worried that race might undermine the Obama campaign. While those worries didn’t materialize, these graphs suggest that race had an impact at the ballot box in a profound way. Racial and ethnic minorities voted more Democratic, and whites voted more Republican in 2008. This pattern is not entirely new — as one can see in the 2004 graph — but these patterns were much sharper in 2008.

Now a lot of the minority groups that I’ve identified are small. For instance, the category of “Hispanic and other minority Protestants” made up about 4% of the 2008 electorate. That’s about twice the size of the Jewish community. So 4% of the electorate’s not a trivial group, given the enormous diversity of American religion. And if you add up all these small ethno-religious groups, they account for a significant bloc of voters.

One of the reasons that I wanted to highlight this pattern is that there is constant talk about the effect of immigration in the United States and the fact that the United States is becoming much more diverse in ethnic and racial terms. But oftentimes we don’t see an example of the practical impact of this new diversity — and these graphs provide a good example. I think these patterns had some special things to do with Barack Obama, but nonetheless, it does show how increased diversity can ultimately matter at the ballot box. It’s interesting that all these minority groups lined up on the same side politically in 2008, whereas in 2004 they didn’t. Maybe they will line up on the same side in future elections, but maybe they will divide up between the major political parties once again.

Changes between 2008 and 2004

Let’s move on and talk a little bit about some of the changes between 2004 and 2008. Overall, the biggest changes in the Democratic vote came among the religious minorities, including Hispanic Catholics, Hispanic Protestants, and other minority Catholics and Protestants. There were some changes among black Protestants, but of course, that group was so Democratic to begin with, there wasn’t a lot of movement that could occur. Obama also made gains among Jews, the “other faiths” category and the composite categories of “Hispanics and other minorities” among Catholics and Protestants.

A lot of attention was focused in the campaign on the large, white Christian groups — evangelical and mainline Protestants and Catholics — and these data show some interesting stories. To begin with, there was essentially no change in the vote of regular worship-attending white evangelical Protestants, the core of what sometimes is called “the religious right” — one of the strongest Republican voting groups. I don’t think the Obama campaign had any expectation that they would make inroads in this group, but there were quite a few commentators who thought that that might happen.

There was, however, some change in the evangelical community, and it occurred mostly among less-observant evangelical Protestants. Among mainline Protestants there was an interesting pattern. In the exit polls, there was essentially no change among white mainline Protestants. But the data presented here suggest that there were some changes within this large religious community. For instance, Obama may have made some gains among regular worship-attending mainline Protestants.. And it may very well be that a lot of the efforts to mobilize the religious vote paid off in that particular community. However, these data show essentially no change among the less-observant mainline Protestants, who were evenly divided. This group was where one might have expected bigger Democratic gains.

In the exit polls, white Catholics stayed on the Republican side of the ledger, and the most observant Catholics moved in a Republican direction by a few percentage points. These data suggest there’s a bit of a polarization among white Catholics, with the regular mass-attenders moving more Republican than they were in 2004, but the less-regular mass-attenders moving more Democratic.

Looking at the Republican side, George W. Bush generally did better than John McCain in many religious groups. But where McCain had his biggest problem was among religious minorities of various kinds.

Why was the change so modest?

Given the focus in the campaign on religion and the efforts to mobilize religious groups, why was there so little change? There are a couple of ways to answer this question.

First is that it’s important to remember that, in terms of the overall vote, the change between 2004 and 2008 actually wasn’t that large. John Kerry got approximately 49% of the two-party vote in 2004, and Barack Obama got about 53% of the two-party vote in 2008. So there’s a shift of roughly 4 percentage points. Barack Obama won a solid victory, particularly compared with the 2000 presidential election. But it shouldn’t surprise us that changes were not that large within many religious groups because there just wasn’t that much overall change.

Another thing to remember is that many religious groups are strongly partisan these days. They’re deeply embedded into the party coalitions, with each party having strong religious constituencies, and some groups in the middle and up for grabs. We know that partisanship is a very strong predictor of the vote. And, as many of you know, between 2000 and 2004 there were some changes in partisanship. The Republican brand name took a big hit and that influenced the vote of religious groups as well.

The impact of partisanship can be seen in the following graph. Here some of the smaller religious groups were combined for ease of presentation, and they are arrayed from the group that voted least for Obama (weekly attending white evangelical Protestants) to the group that voted most for Obama (black Protestants). The solid line shows the Obama vote, and it rises steadily across the chart. But the dashed line is the interesting one: It’s the percentage of each of these groups that identified as Democrats. Note that the solid and dashed lines are basically the same line. So part of what was going on in 2008 is that the campaigns were mobilizing their partisans, and even though this wasn’t the kind of base-mobilization election that 2004 was, partisanship still mattered a great deal.

Source: Analysis of aggregated election weekend and post-election callback surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Partisanship develops very slowly over time. It took about 30 years to get the faith-based structure we’re talking about, so maybe it’s not surprising that it didn’t go away in a single election. But of course, over the next 30 years or so, we may see some important changes, and we may look back to this election and see some of the modest alterations as the beginnings of important trends.

A final explanation for the modest change in 2008 may be the patterns of faith-based mobilization by the campaigns. In 2008 as in 2004, the People & the Press asked survey respondents about campaign contacts within their congregations. The levels of reported contacts were down in 2008 for most religious communities — an interesting pattern given the focus of the campaigns. Interestingly, the least decline in reported contacts was for religious minorities that strongly backed Obama. And among white Christian groups, weekly worship-attenders still reported higher contact rates, and these were the groups that by and large stuck with the Republicans and voted for McCain.

[T]here’s another question that the Pew Research Center asks regularly that is, in some ways, even more interesting: the likelihood of presidential success. The results are shown in a final bar chart, where the red bars represent the percentage of each group that thought Bush was going to be successful in office, back in 2004, and the blue bars the percentage that thought Obama will be successful in 2008.

Source: Analysis of aggregated election weekend and post-election callback surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Results for Bush based on interviews with 62 black Protestants, 71 minority Christians and 95 weekly attending white mainline Protestants. Results for Obama based on interviews with 95 members of non-Christian faiths. All other results based on interviews with at least 100 respondents.

Look at the blue bars. Every religious category has a majority that thinks that Obama will be successful in his first term. That’s interesting because it suggests that President Obama has an opening, even with religious groups that didn’t vote for him. Now, looking at the red bars, compare that with what happened in 2004. Notice that many of the Democratic groups didn’t think that Bush was going to have a successful second term. Maybe they were onto something, given the decline of Bush’s approval after the 2004 election.

This chart does suggest that there may have been a bit of a change between 2004 and 2008. So behind the modest shift in the voting behavior of religious groups, there may be a larger change lurking. And these possibilities may have to do with how successful President Obama and his Democratic colleagues actually turn out to be in office. Campaigns are important things to voters, but they’re not nearly as important as the performance of the government itself.

Anna Greenberg

ANNA GREENBERG: I want to focus more on looking at individual groups, but also, what the religious narrative was and how it played out in this election. [T]he Pew Forum did an excellent analysis of the coverage of religion in the election. Their analysis showed what I think we all know instinctively in our gut, that the main religious narrative of this election was about Barack Obama’s faith. That came out in a lot of different ways: the question of whether or not he was a Muslim or a Christian, his middle name, etc., but also the Jeremiah Wright conversation, which started during the primaries and extended throughout. Even though John McCain didn’t advertise on Jeremiah Wright, other groups did, and certainly it was part of the discussion.

I think that the whole question of Barack Obama’s faith and his affiliation raised lots of questions for lots of voters. It wasn’t necessarily a debate about religion itself, but it was a stand-in for a conversation about Barack Obama. Who is he? Where does he come from, as John McCain said. What values does he represent? Is he patriotic? There’s a whole set of questions around this question of his affiliation — of his faith — and that’s on the more negative side. On the more positive side, would he have the ability to reach out and would he be able to make inroads among white evangelicals? Would he be able to be a unifier? Could he bring people together? Could he reach across religious lines and break down some of the trends that John was showing us?

He actually had a very significant religious outreach program — not as extensive as the kind of religious outreach that Rove and Bush did in 2002 and 2004, but certainly more extensive than what Democrats had done in the past.

So what’s interesting about all of this is that, first of all, it’s very hard for Democratic candidates to escape stereotypes about their religiosity. In a survey I did with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly and the United Nations Foundation, we asked the question: Which candidate do you think is more religious? I think we all know, objectively, that Barack Obama was the more religious candidate. And actually most of the Democrats — if you look at Hillary Clinton — were more religious than John McCain. What’s interesting is that we asked this question in September, so this was well after conversations about belonging to the Trinity Church for 20 years. It’s after Saddleback², so it’s after a whole lot of conversation about Barack Obama and his religious affiliation, his religious participation.

It’s not by a huge margin, but it’s actually beyond the margin of error — 32% think that McCain was the most religious candidate, 28% Barack Obama, another third didn’t know. So it’s very hard for Democrats ever to be perceived as the more religious. [W]hat’s really interesting is that only 46% of Democrats said that Barack Obama was the more religious candidate. So even among Democrats, the stereotypes about Democrats and religion are pretty strong.

The Pew Research Center asked: Do you happen to know what religion Barack Obama is? And 57% said he was Christian, 12% thought he was Muslim, and the rest — I want to know who that 1% who think he’s Jewish is — I don’t understand what that’s about. (Laughter.) Among the people who thought that Barack Obama was a Muslim, there were an equal number of Democrats and Republicans; this was not necessarily a partisan issue.

We did a lot of focus groups with people who had voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary but were not voting for Barack Obama in the general and with people who called themselves Democrats but weren’t sure what they were going to do or were voting for McCain. They all ended up being sort of the same people.

In these focus groups, this whole conversation about whether or not Barack Obama was a Muslim was a very big piece of it. Now people aren’t necessarily rational when they have these conversations, so in the same sentence they would say: “I think he’s a Muslim” and “I can’t believe he belonged to that church for 20 years.” You’re trying to figure out how they can reconcile those two pieces of information — that he’s both a Muslim and a member of this radical Christian church. It was my belief that this whole question of whether or not he was a Muslim, on its face, was an issue for some people but also was a stand-in for race.

One of the things we also spent a lot of time trying to figure out was how this whole so-called Bradley effect — I’m so glad that conversation is over; I never want to have it again — but we took it seriously. When it was clear that Obama was going to be the nominee, as early as February in my view, we started doing some real research on this whole question of, how do you measure the impact of race?

It turns out if you just ask directly — this isn’t surprising — does Barack Obama’s race matter to you? — that’s not a very good way to measure it. In fact, what you found was that for people who said that it did, they were more likely to vote for Obama. They were younger; it was a positive. But there were other kinds of questions that could be a stand-in for race, and one of them was this idea that Barack Obama was too close to extremists. Actually, that ended up being a pretty powerful predictor. Lots of other things predict how you’re going to vote, including partisanship and church attendance, but that kind of question in terms of the race issue — and you can word it lots of different ways — was actually a predictor of how people were going to vote.

On that question it was about a third Democrats, a third Republicans and a third independents; it wasn’t correlated with partisanship. There were clearly a bunch of white Democratic voters for whom this whole question of race/Muslim/extremist — however you want to ask it — Who is he? Where does he come from? What are his values? — was important. You had some people in these focus groups who thought he was literally like a Manchurian candidate, that he was going to get elected and then get into office and reveal himself as a Muslim and take over the country.

Now just to make the point, keeping in mind that half of these folks are Democrats, among people who thought that Obama was a Muslim, 51% would vote for McCain, 37% would vote for Obama, and among people who thought that Obama was a Christian, the numbers are flipped — 52% would vote for Obama, 39% would vote for McCain.

One of the groups for whom this whole question of Barack Obama as a Muslim — whether or not he’s a Muslim but also extending to other questions around Israel and Palestinians and things he might have said about the Palestinians, etc. — was very important to Jewish voters. I’ve done a fair amount of work on Jewish voters, though it’s not easy to do because Jews are such a small percentage of the population and of the electorate. But I was on a panel that the National Jewish Democratic Council put on at the Democratic convention, and there were three different sources of data. There was the J Street survey, which was an Internet survey of Jewish voters; there was Gallup, which wasn’t actually a separate survey of Jewish voters — they do so much polling that they basically aggregate their surveys and pull out the Jewish interviews; and then we had our own internal databases, where I had about 1,500 Jews.

Winning the Jewish vote

Looking at all three sources of data going into the convention, it was pretty clear that Barack Obama was pretty seriously underperforming among Jewish voters. This trend line from Gallup shows you that in the summer, he’s getting anywhere between 60 and 65% of the Jewish vote, which seems very high obviously. But relative to — certainly since Clinton — Democrats get around 80% — 78, 80% — of the Jewish vote. So that kind of number is actually pretty low. Now it doesn’t really matter nationally, that difference between what previous candidates have gotten and what Obama was getting, but it actually mattered a lot in Florida.

I did not believe that Obama was going to win Florida, certainly not at the beginning of the year. But as more and more polls were coming out showing the race was competitive in Florida, we did our own poll — a couple polls — in Florida, and Obama was doing very well in places like Miami, and he was very competitive in the I-4 corridor, which includes Tampa and Orlando. That’s always considered kind of the swing area of Florida, and he was actually tied with McCain, which was a very good result. But he was really underperforming in Broward County, Dade County, West Palm — the Jewish parts of Florida.

It might have been a 20-point gap between the percentage who were calling themselves Democrats and the percentage who were voting for Obama. Now my grandmother and grandfather retired to Ft. Lauderdale. I’ve spent a lot of time in those condos in Broward County, and I know what those folks are like. And of course, there was “The Great Schlep” and that sort of thing. Did everyone see the Sarah Silverman video, “The Great Schlep?” I mean, nothing really happened. I don’t think lots of Jews went down to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama, but it was funny. It was very Jewish.

But, anyway, so what was really fascinating about this was at this meeting at the Democratic Convention, it was like a mob of angry, Jewish state legislators from Florida, who were really angry at the Obama campaign because they felt like, we’re going into these condos and we got nothing. We have to convince these old Jewish voters that Obama’s okay, that he’s not a Muslim, that he’s not going to favor the Palestinians in some way and not support Israel. If you looked at the data that I had, it was really clear that the issue was with older Jews, which was not surprising; all of Obama’s issues were with older voters, older white voters. Jews aren’t different — radically different — in some ways than other voters; they’re the same groups.

But this obviously mattered a great deal in Florida. I don’t know exactly what the Obama campaign did. I think some of it was Sarah Palin; I think some of it was the debates. There were a variety of things that happened independent of the Obama campaign, though my understanding is that they put significant resources into outreach in this part of Florida. But what you can see nationally with the Gallup data is that over time Obama went from 62, 61% of the Jewish vote to 74% by the end of the election. And if you look at the exit polls, Obama got 78% of Jewish voters — that’s actually slightly better than Kerry did and it’s about where Gore and Clinton were.

I think if you look at the polls going into Election Day and then you look at the exit polls, the one group where Obama really did worse than Kerry was with older white voters. If you look toward the end, particularly post-debates, which I think were enormously reassuring to voters who had concerns about him and who he was and all the questions that McCain asked, you started to see a slight movement. But when you look at the exit polls, he actually didn’t do very well with older white voters, and what I don’t know is, was that movement real? Was there a pull back on Election Day? If there was a Bradley effect, maybe it was just with that group. But the point is, Jewish voters are the one group where the campaign, in any event, was successfulin overcoming some of these doubts about him.

Obama’s gains with younger evangelicals

So the other narrative in this election was, can Obama make inroads with more-conservative religious groups? He poured resources into that in his campaign. People had anecdotal evidence that young evangelicals might be more favorable to Obama than older. So when I did this poll for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, we did an over-sample of younger evangelicals.

Most of the national tracking polls had Obama at about 60% among under-30s, and he actually got 66%. So what we did with this poll was [a] multi-mode study. A certain number of interviews came from random digit dial, a certain percentage from the internet — we didn’t do the cell phone for a variety of reasons. We had, I think, the first real sample of young evangelicals and what we found was that, in fact, it was true that younger white evangelicals were more likely to support Obama than older white evangelicals.

Data from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly/United Nations Foundation survey of 1000 adults and 400 young evangelicals, conducted September 2008 by GQR.

I was on a panel with GOP political strategist David Winston last week and he said, well, you know, when they get older, they’ll vote more Republican because people when they get older, they tend to vote more Republican. And I said maybe, but the reason why people do that is they tend to get married and start going to church and these folks already go to church, so I don’t know what’s going to happen. The kinds of changes — you get married, you have children, you pay taxes — for younger evangelicals, they’ve already done a lot of the things that make you more conservative when you get older.

Even though this is from September, the 30% number is true across all three data sets that I looked at, so I feel pretty confident that Obama got 30% of younger — this is under age 30 — white evangelicals. So about 8 points better. [S]till, it’s a very Republican group. Let’s not get carried away here. I mean, 62% voted for McCain, and maybe even higher. But 30% for Obama, so 8 points higher [than among older evangelicals].

Data from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly/United Nations Foundation survey of 1000 adults and 400 young evangelicals, conducted September 2008 by GQR.

Much more dramatic is the Republican brand among younger evangelicals. To measure favorability, we do something called a feeling thermometer, where you have to rate your feelings toward candidates, organizations or groups on a 0-to-100 scale. Anything above 50 is warm and anything below 50 is cool.

If you look at the white evangelicals over age 30 and at [feelings toward] George Bush, [you find] 57% positive, 29% negative. And you know what Bush’s numbers are overall, so it’s radically different. But look at where the younger ones are; he’s got net negative ratings, 39% warm, 48% cool. You see a similar sort of pattern, though it’s not as bad, on the Republican Party — plus-45% positive rating, 64% warm, among older white evangelicals and only a net plus-5 positive rating for the Republican Party among younger evangelicals. So Obama gets 30%, but the Republican brand itself is really challenged among this group. I think this is going to be one of the more interesting things to track as this group gets older and becomes a bigger and bigger part of the white evangelical group in the electorate.

Then you can see, looking at a variety of issues, the differences between older and younger evangelicals. Again, we don’t know if, when younger evangelicals age they’ll get more conservative, but I was really struck by this slide, which is a question on gay marriage.

Data from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly/United Nations Foundation survey of 1000 adults and 400 young evangelicals, conducted September 2008 by GQR.

What I would point out is that a majority of younger white evangelicals favor some kind of legal recognition of same-sex couples. So 26% say the right to marry, which I think is a very high number, and 32% say that they should be offered the same protections and benefits of marriage. Overall, 58% of younger white evangelicals think there should be some kind of legal recognition of marriage between same-sex couples. If you look at the older evangelicals, you can see that it’s pretty dramatically different — 9% for actual marriage, 37% for some kind of civil union.

If you look at the question of Iraq, again, the younger evangelicals are still different from other young people, but there is a slight majority for reducing the troops as opposed to staying the course, and that’s different from older evangelicals. If you look at the question of global warming, the differences aren’t huge, but still, the younger evangelicals are more likely to believe that global warming is kind of imminent and we need to take action now as opposed to a long-term threat that we can do something about later. But then, on this question of abortion, there’s literally no difference between older and younger evangelicals. We asked a lot of different kinds of abortion questions in this survey. Every single way you asked the abortion question, you had the younger and the older — and in fact, in some cases the younger being more conservative than older evangelicals on abortion.

Data from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly/United Nations Foundation survey of 1000 adults and 400 young evangelicals, conducted September 2008 by GQR.

I wanted to end on one final discussion of where I think religion played an interesting role in this election, and that’s ballot initiatives. In general, gay marriage and abortion — not very big issues in this election nationally, and that often happens when you have elections dominated by the economy and the war in Iraq in 2006. But there were some pretty important ballot questions, particularly Prop 8 in California, which I’ve actually spent some time doing research on and which we can talk about during Q & A.

Evangelicals’ impact on ballot initiatives

I’m throwing this out here as a kind of interesting, potentially provocative idea, but I don’t have an explanation. It looks like, if you look at the different states where there were abortion and gay marriage initiatives, that evangelicals were key to the passage of gay marriage bans but not sufficient to pass the abortion restrictions. I don’t know why, exactly, but I’m just going to show you because I think it’s interesting. If you look at Prop 8, which is the gay marriage ban in California, [among] white evangelicals– only 17% of the electorate in California — 81% voted “yes.” Everybody else was a slight majority for the “no” vote. Obviously that’s gotten into a lot of discussion of African-Americans and other things we can talk about — Hispanics — and that’s all part of the story. But the evangelical piece is key here, and the Mormon church and others did a huge amount of organizing work in the evangelical community around Prop 8.

If you look at Florida and the gay marriage ban, 81% [of evangelicals], and they are 25% of the electorate in Florida, voted for the gay marriage ban. Arkansas, it wasn’t gay marriage — it was an adoption measure — and it’s a lower number, 65%. But then when you compare the abortion ballot questions, especially in California, to the gay marriage ones, it’s kind of interesting — all the gay marriage ones passed and all the abortion ones failed. So, again, I’m not entirely sure what that’s about, but it’s interesting to think about.

But if you look at the abortion limits– and the abortion limit in California was parental notification, which is actually something that gets pretty high levels of agreement with everybody– it’s interesting that you have about a 10-point drop in the number of evangelicals voting “yes” on parental notification compared with the gay marriage ban — and obviously a much larger majority of non-evangelicals voting “no” on abortion limits.

South Dakota [the abortion limit on the ballot] was a redo of the one that failed two years ago. If you remember, the main reason [the earlier initiative] failed was there was no exception for health of the mother, and so they changed the language, but it still failed in South Dakota. Again, a smaller percentage of evangelicals, compared with the gay marriage bans — 64% — and a very big majority of the non-evangelicals voted against it.

I think it’s something to investigate, both on the question of the differences in how evangelicals organized around these gay marriage bans in these different states, especially California, relative to the abortion bans, but also why there was a lower level of support among evangelicals on the abortion limitation measures than there was on the gay marriage bans. Again, I don’t really have an answer for it, but I think it would be interesting to dig into that and think about it.

Read the complete transcript at pewforum.org.

1. Likely voters in the pre-election survey were combined with reported voters in the post-election survey, and then the combined respondents were weighted to reflect the actual election outcome.
2. The Saddleback Civil Forum on Presidency, held on Aug. 17, 2008, was the first time both John McCain and Barack Obama appeared on stage since they became the presumptive presidential nominees for their parties.

The analysis of total survey error has evolved over many decades to consider a wide variety of potential threats, including concerns about the contribution of both bias and variance, and an attention to errors of both observation and non-observation (Groves 1989). The validity of public opinion polling in the presidential election of 2008 was thought to be seriously imperiled by a wide range of these potential errors. Among these were coverage error due to the growth of the wireless-only population, nonresponse error potentially caused by differential nonresponse among Republicans and racially conservative voters, and measurement error potentially resulting from racially-related understatement of support for the Republican candidate and greater-than-usual difficulties in forecasting turnout and identifying likely voters.

Despite these obstacles, polls performed very well, with 8 of 17 national polls predicting the final margin in the presidential election within one percentage point and most of the others coming within three points. Both at the national and state levels, the accuracy of the polls matched or exceeded that of 2004, which was itself a good year for the polls. The performance of election polls is no mere trophy for the polling community, for the credibility of the entire survey research profession depends to a great degree on how election polls match the objective standard of election outcomes. The consequences of a poor performance were dramatically demonstrated in the reaction to the primary polls’ inaccurate prediction that Barack Obama would win in New Hampshire, portrayed as one of polling’s great failures in the modern political era (AAPOR 2009).

We examine the challenges of potential coverage bias from excluding cell phones and potential measurement and non-response bias due to race in detail using data from a wide range of sources, including a summary analysis of state and national pre-election polls, six telephone surveys conducted among both landline and cell phone samples, and a comparison of a survey conducted by landline with reluctant and elusive respondents with a survey conducted at the same time with a fresh sample using standard methodology. Our conclusion is that some of the threats were very real but overcome by the techniques normally employed in surveys to address potential bias from various sources of error, while other threats turned out to be less serious than some anticipated.

I. Polling Accuracy

Pre-election polls conducted by telephone did very well in forecasting the outcome of the election in 2008. This was true for polls using live interviewers and those conducted with recorded voices. It was true for those based only on landline interviews and those that included cell phones. The basic methodology of the telephone survey remains robust in the face of the many challenges now facing this mode of data collection.

Our assessment uses data and estimates compiled by the National Council on Public Polls (NCPP), which evaluated 17 national presidential polls and 236 state polls conducted in the final week of the campaign, covering the presidential vote and votes for U.S. Senate and governor. Its measure of accuracy was the average candidate estimate error, defined as half of the difference between the actual election margin minus the poll’s margin.

For the 17 national telephone polls evaluated, the mean candidate estimate error less than 1 percentage point error on each presidential candidate (0.8%). Among the 11 national landline-only polls, four underestimated Obama’s support, five overestimated it, and two had the margin exactly right. The absolute average candidate error for these landline-only surveys was 0.8%. Among the six dual frame surveys, one underestimated Obama’s margin and four overestimated it; one had the margin exactly right. The average candidate estimate error for the dual frame surveys was also 0.8%.

Errors in polling at the state level were larger but still relatively small. The NCPP collected statewide polling data on the presidential race from 146 polls conducted from October 27, 2008 through Election Day, with an average candidate error of 1.6 percentage points. Including additional statewide races for senate and governor for a total of 237 races, the average candidate error for these races was 1.9 percentage points, about the same as in 2004 (1.7 percentage points). Of all state races polled by landline telephone and tracked by NCPP with most interviews conducted October 27 or later (237), more had errors favoring the Republican candidate (125) than the Democrat (86). But the mean error in each direction was about the same (approximately 2.0% for each). The mean error among IVR polls (1.7%) was slightly lower than among those with live interviewers (2.1%).

While the polling errors were greater at the state level than at the national level, the fact that they were little changed from 2004 was notable, given the sharp increase in the percentage of Americans with no landline phone and our presumption that all or nearly all of the state polling was conducted among landline samples. Of course, the landline non-coverage rate is not uniform across all states. Estimates of the prevalence of wireless-only adults for 2007 by the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHDAC) at the University of Minnesota ranged from 4.0% in Delaware to 25.1% in Oklahoma and 25.4% in the District of Columbia (Blumberg et al., 2009). Thus the potential for bias is greater in some places than others.

II. The Non-Coverage Threat: A Small but Real Bias in Landline Samples

The cell phone problem in telephone survey research is well documented. As many as one-in-five voting age adults live in wireless-only households, and there is widespread evidence that they are not only demographically distinct but also differ in certain behaviors – particularly those related to health. (Blumberg and Luke 2009). In addition to the wireless-only coverage problem, evidence that some adults are “wireless mostly” and are difficult to access over landline telephones suggests that coverage problems may be even more widespread. When it comes to political attitudes and voting patterns, however, evidence that adults in wireless-only households differ substantially from their counterparts with landline phones is less definitive, especially when demographic characteristics are held constant (Pew Research Center 2008 ). As a result, while there is a clear coverage problem in pre-election landline-only surveys, the question of whether effective demographic weighting of landline-only surveys can effectively reduce or eliminate any resulting bias remains an open one.

An analysis of six Pew Research surveys conducted from September through the weekend before the election shows that estimates based only on landline interviews weighted to basic demographic parameters were likely to have a small pro-McCain bias compared with estimates based on both landline and cell phone interviews weighted similarly. Other survey organizations reported a similar result.

But the difference, while statistically significant, was small in absolute terms – smaller than the margin of sampling error in most polls. Obama’s average lead across the six surveys was 9.9 points among registered voters when cell phone and landline interviews were combined and weighted. If estimates had been based only on the weighted landline samples, Obama’s average lead would have been 7.6 points, an average bias of 2.3 percentage points on the margin, or about 1.2 points expressed as candidate error. Limiting the analysis to likely voters rather than all voters produced similar results. Obama’s average lead among likely voters was 8.2 points across all six dual frame surveys versus 5.8 points (or 1.2 points as candidate error) when the landline samples are analyzed alone. (See the appendix for a detailed description of the sampling and weighting employed in this analysis.)

While estimates based only on landline interviews typically exhibited a pro-McCain bias, the pattern was not uniform. Four of the six surveys conducted after the August conventions fit the pattern; the largest difference was in the final election weekend survey where Obama led McCain by 11 points in the dual frame sample, but by six points if only landline interviews were considered. Yet in two of the six surveys this pattern did not hold. In late September and late October, Obama’s lead was slightly narrower in the combined landline and cell survey than in the landline survey alone. This indicates that the overall pattern, while important, was not large enough to overcome normal sampling fluctuation.

The fact that the bias related to phone status was relatively small, despite the large demographic differences between the cell-only and landline-accessible populations, is a function both of the proportion of all voters who are cell-only (i.e., the relative size of the cell-only population) and the effects of demographic weighting. Weighting will help minimize this bias as long as the weighting variables correlated with phone status are also related to the political measures of interest for both cell-only and landline-accessible voters. Put differently, voters reachable by landline who share certain demographic characteristics with cell-only voters are more similar politically to cell-only voters than to other landline voters.

Not all of the variables that are strongly associated with phone status and political behavior are currently being used in typical weighting protocols; among these are marital status, presence of children in the household, family income and home ownership. This suggests that there is untapped opportunity for further reduction in cell-only bias with the use of additional weighting variables, assuming these can be measured reliably and that adequate parameters are available. One way to assess the potential effectiveness of weighting is to estimate the impact of cell-only status on the vote with and without these controls.

Logistic regression was used to estimate the probability of voting for Obama among landline voters and cell-only voters. As would be expected, the difference is sizeable; the predicted probability of voting for Obama is 16 points higher for cell-only voters than for landline voters. Adding most of the standard demographic variables used in weighting (e.g., age, sex, race, Hispanicity education, and region) to the model (labeled the “standard model” in Table 3) reduces this difference to 11 points, a result consistent with the notion that weighting helps reduce but not eliminate the potential for non-coverage bias. Including income, marital status and home ownership in the model reduces the difference even further to 5 points. When these additional demographics are included in the model, being cell phone only is no longer a significant predictor of candidate support, as it was in the first two models.

Although the evidence from the 2008 election indicates that cell-only respondents may pose a relatively minor threat of bias to most telephone surveys, a related threat also attracted attention: respondents who rely mostly on their cell phones and thus might be difficult to reach by landline even if they have one. The issue is whether the wireless mostly group is adequately represented by landline respondents who have both a cell phone and a landline, but rely mostly on their cell phone.

Data collected during the 2008 election campaign suggests that while the wireless mostly reached by cell phone are somewhat different from those reached by landline, combined samples of wireless mostly voters from both sampling frames differ only slightly from the wireless mostly who are reached by landline after standard demographic weighting. On the issue of candidate preference, 55% of all wireless-mostly voters interviews in the six Pew Research pre-election surveys supported Obama for president compared with 51% of wireless mostly from the landline sample; differences in party, ideology, and political engagement were smaller.

The validity of this generalization depends upon an unknown quantity, namely what proportion of interviews of the cell-mostly group should come from each frame to produce the most valid representation of the group. In our surveys approximately 40% of the cell-mostly group comes from the wireless frame. But whatever the best mix, the potential for bias on the total survey estimate is modest, given the fact that wireless-mostly respondents constitute only about 15% of all adults (Blumberg and Luke 2009) and thus far most research suggests that they are reachable by landline surveys.

Problems with pre-election polls in biracial elections in the 1980s and early 1990s raised the question of whether covert racism remained an impediment to black candidates (Keeter and Samaranayake 2007; Hopkins 2008; Hugick 1990)). White candidates in many of these races generally did better on Election Day than they were doing in the polls, while their black opponents tended to end up with about the same level of support as the polls indicated they might. This phenomenon, often called “the Bradley effect,” was first noticed in the 1982 race for governor of California, where Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black Democrat, narrowly lost to Republican George Deukmejian, despite polls showing him with a lead ranging from 9 to 22 points.

The accuracy of the polls in the general election and — with the notable exception of the New Hampshire primary — the long series of Democratic primaries provides more than adequate refutation of a Bradley Effect in the 2008 presidential election, at least at a magnitude that could seriously undermine the accuracy of pre-election polls. Indeed, evidence from five statewide elections in 2006 involving black and white candidates, in which polling was quite accurate, strongly suggested that the Bradley Effect was no longer potent (Keeter and Samaranayake 2007). Still, whether the Bradley Effect would play a different role in a contest for the presidency than in a gubernatorial or Senate race was unknown, and the possibility of seriously biased polls in 2008 was a frequent subject of political discussion.

Despite the accuracy of the 2008 primary polls in hindsight, we concluded that it was prudent to dissect the possible mechanisms by which the Bradley Effect could operate and evaluate the potential for a bias so that precautions could be taken.

The Bradley Effect could be the result of two different phenomena: reluctance by racially conservative poll respondents to say that they intended to vote against the black candidate, or a greater resistance among racially conservative voters to be interviewed. The first of these – measurement error due to a “social desirability bias” that manifests itself on many sensitive topics in surveys — can be studied indirectly through the use of such techniques as the “list experiment” and a comparison of interviews conducted by white and black interviewers. To test this, we analyzed differences in responses by race of interviewer to assess the degree of racial sensitivity in questions about Obama’s candidacy and other questions measuring racial attitudes.

The second source of potential bias is from non-response error related to the salience or nature of the survey topic or the presumed sponsor (the “mainstream media”). This might be detected by comparing poll respondents reached in a normal survey with those who initially refused to participate or were very difficult to reach for an interview. Non-response bias affected the accuracy of the exit polls in both 2004 and in the 2008 primaries and general election. To test for this second source of error, we made an effort to reach reluctant respondents and compare them with samples reached using our normal interviewing protocol.

Race of Interviewer Analysis

We found little evidence of racial sensitivity in the patterns of responses based on the race of respondent and the race of the interviewer. Unlike previous elections involving white and black candidates (Guterbock, Finkel and Borg 1991), there is little to suggest that voters’ responses were significantly affected by the race of the person interviewing them over the phone. Among white non-Hispanic registered voters in the six pre-election Pew Research Center polls beginning in mid-September, there were no systematic differences in candidate support by race of interviewer, either among all white non-Hispanic voters, or among white Democratic voters (Democrats and Democratic leaning independents). There also were no systematic differences among black voters (not shown), who overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama.

Over these six polls, a significant race of interviewer effect was found only once. In the mid-September poll, counter to the expectation of a social desirability effect, white Democratic voters who spoke with black interviewers were 8 percentage points less likely to express support for Obama. In later surveys, differences by race of interviewer were neither consistent in either direction nor significant.

Multivariate analysis confirms this finding; logistic regressions on candidate support found no significant effect of race of interviewer on support for either Obama or McCain, either among all white non-Hispanic voters or among white non-Hispanic Democratic voters. The results in Table 7 are for the election weekend poll; the effect of race of interviewer was similarly non-significant impact on the two other large pre-election polls (mid-September and Mid-October).

While there is little evidence to suggest that respondents were more reluctant to voice opposition to Obama when interviewed by African American interviewers than when interviewed by white interviewers, there was a small difference in the composition of the samples interviewed by white and black interviewers; this difference is consistent with the theory that reluctant whites may have self-selected out of interviews with black interviewers.

Black interviewers were less likely than their white counterparts to interview white respondents (and white Democratic respondents) on most of the six Pew Research Center election polls, and these differences were significant on the penultimate and final surveys before the election. For example, on election weekend, among Democratic respondents interviewed, 66% of those conducted by white non-Hispanic interviewers were with white non-Hispanic respondents, compared with only 59% of interviews conducted by black non-Hispanic interviewers. The previous week, this gap was even larger (68% compared to 51%). A similar pattern holds for the overall white sample on these surveys.

That African American interviewers were less likely to conduct interviews with white respondents could provide support for the hypothesis that racially conservative whites are more reluctant to respond to polls conducted by non-white interviewers, and thus contribute to a possible bias in the results. However, this finding may also be attributable to other differences between white and black interviewers that may be confounded with race.

For instance, there was a somewhat uneven gender distribution (the percentage male among black interviewers was slightly higher than among white interviewers) and some differences in the schedules of white and black interviewers that may have affected the mix of respondents they interviewed (e.g., black interviewers were more likely to work on weekends). The fact that black interviewers were more likely to interview black respondents also may be the result of black respondents’ greater receptivity to requests for interviews when called by a black interviewer rather than white respondents’ greater resistance to being interviewed by black interviewers.

Are Reluctant Respondents More Racially Conservative?

Evidence that reluctant respondents are more racially conservative is mixed. The Pew Research Center’s 1997 non-response study found that the most difficult to interview respondents were slightly more racially conservative than those easier to interview (Pew Research Center 1998). But a follow up study conducted in 2003 found no such pattern.

To evaluate this notion in the context of the 2008 campaign, we conducted a recontact survey of hard-to-reach households from earlier survey samples. To do so, we constructed a sample of landline telephone numbers based on households that had either refused to be interviewed or where at least five call attempts had been made with no completion in polls conducted by Pew Research between January and May 2008. The recontact interviews were conducted July 31-August 10, 2008, with 1,000 respondents. Results from these interviews were compared with a new national survey conducted at the same time among a landline sample of 2,254 respondents.

In the general election matchup, there were no significant differences in vote choice or strength of support between hard-to-reach voters and the comparable late August sample. McCain and Obama were tied at 44% among the hard to reach; McCain held a narrow 46% to 44% lead in the August sample. In both the August poll and the concurrent hard-to-reach sample, Obama received more strong support than McCain, and these proportions were nearly identical in the two samples. Hard-to-reach voters may have been slightly more likely to be swing voters, but the difference was not statistically significant (35% vs. 32% in the comparable August sample).

One area of clear difference between the hard-to-reach sample and the concurrent survey was in primary candidate support among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters: In the hard-to-reach sample, Democratic voters were considerably more likely to have supported Hillary Clinton in their party’s nominating contest. Clinton had a 48%-to-43% lead among the hard-to-reach sample, while Obama had a 51%-to-41% lead among the comparable August sample. If the analysis is limited to white Democrats and leaners, the magnitude of the difference is similar.

These bivariate results were supported by a multivariate analysis that controlled for sex, age, education, region and, where appropriate, race and party (not shown). A logistic regression predicting the nomination preferences of white, non-Hispanic Democrats and Democratic-leaners found a strong and significant effect of being in the hard-to-reach sample on support for Hillary Clinton rather than Barack Obama. A similar regression analysis found no significant difference in general election preferences, either for all registered voters or for white Democrats and Democratic leaners. That differences are more apparent in the primary contest may suggest a greater willingness of racially conservative Democratic voters to report opposition to a black candidate without having to overcome party identification; put differently, a vote by a Democrat for a white candidate against a black candidate in an intra-party contest should be less stigmatizing or dissonant than a general election vote where the Democratic voter is presented with the choice of a white Republican candidate over a black Democratic candidate.

As with candidate preferences, we also found somewhat mixed results on racial attitudes. Hard-to-reach respondents were as likely as landline respondents in a June 2008 survey to say that it’s all right for blacks and whites to date each other (79% in the weighted hard-to-reach survey vs. 81% in June). And like the landline respondents in a September 2006 Pew Research survey, hard-to-reach respondents were divided on whether immigrants strengthen the U.S. or are a burden on the country.

But hard-to-reach respondents were more likely than a June 2008 landline sample to agree with the statement “We have gone too far in pushing equal rights in this country.” About one-third (34%) of those in the June poll agreed with the statement; 43% in the weighted hard-to-reach sample agreed. The patterns among white Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents were similar to the patterns among all respondents.

One finding consistent with previous research is that hard-to-reach respondents display less interpersonal trust (Keeter et al. 2000). Among the hard-to-reach, nearly six-in-ten (57%) said “you can’t be too careful” in dealing with people; 39% said most people can be trusted. In an October 2006 Pew Research survey, 50% said you can’t be too careful and 45% said most people can be trusted.

But on numerous other comparisons, we found the hard-to-reach sample and standard samples indistinguishable. The hard-to-reach differed little on satisfaction with national conditions, happiness with their personal lives, or political interest and engagement.

While the survey of reluctant households offers evidence of the potential for bias, the magnitude of such a bias is likely to be quite small. Differences in nomination preferences of Democratic voters between the standard sample and the reluctant respondent sample were sizeable (a 15 percentage point difference in the margin). But there may be less here than meets the eye. It was not at all clear that all of these voters would fail to vote for Obama in the general election; indeed, reluctant respondents indicated that they would vote for him at rates comparable to Democratic voters in the standard comparison survey. Further, any potential bias from all of these possibly racially conservative voters abstaining or voting Republican would have been quite modest considering the relatively small size of this group.

IV. Discussion

Despite concerns about the growing problems facing polls and the special challenges of an historic election, most pre-election polling in 2008 performed quite well in forecasting the outcome of both the presidential election and statewide races for governor and senator. Sometimes polls yield the right results for the wrong reasons, but the fact that many kinds of polls in various races and places performed well strongly suggests that the underlying methodology of election polling is still robust.

In the general election, serious bias from the so-called Bradley Effect did not materialize. White voters’ support for Obama did not significantly vary with race of interview, and while our survey of reluctant households offers evidence of the potential for a bias, the magnitude of such a bias is likely to be quite small. Though not a focus of the present study, presidential primary polls, though less accurate than general election polls, also showed no signs of a systematic bias, despite the additional challenges inherent in primary polling. Pro-Obama biases tended to be relatively modest in size and most of the errors that occurred were underestimates of Obama’s performance.

Non-coverage bias resulting from increased reliance on cell phones is a growing problem and might affect the accuracy of polls in the future as the percentage of voters reachable only by cell phone climbs. Even at approximately 20%, the cell-only population was not sufficiently different from other voters to create a large bias in overall survey estimates once normal demographic weighting was applied. But a small bias was apparent and may grow as the size of cell-only population expands. A majority of cell-only voters are ages 30 and older, and demographically they differ more from their landline-accessible age cohorts than do the cell-only voters under age 30. Less clear is whether a similar bias exists with respect to the portion of the population that has both a landline and cell phone but depends mostly on the cell phone.

Finally we should take note of the fact that the 2008 election presented special challenges in identifying likely voters, one of the common problems facing election pollsters. Levels of voter engagement appeared to be extremely high throughout the campaign, and for much of the year Democrats were equally or more engaged than Republicans, an unusual circumstance. Moreover, Barack Obama, as an American of mixed racial background and one parent who was a Muslim, had no precedent among candidates for the nation’s highest office. He was especially popular among young voters and African Americans, two groups with historically lower rates of voter turnout compared with older voters and whites. And adding to the novelty of 2008, it was forecast — correctly — that far more voters would vote by absentee ballot or early voting than had ever done so before. Despite these circumstances, pollsters’ methods for identifying likely voters (Perry 1960; Perry 1979) were evidently adequate to the task, despite wide variations in approaches and methods used to do so (AAPOR 2009).

This commentary is based on a presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Hollywood, Florida, May 14-17, 2009.

Find references and an appendix describing methodology and data sources in the accompanying PDF.

The electorate in last year’s presidential election was the most racially and ethnically diverse in U.S. history, with nearly one-in-four votes cast by non-whites, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center.¹ The nation’s three biggest minority groups — blacks, Hispanics and Asians — each accounted for unprecedented shares of the presidential vote in 2008.

Overall, whites² made up 76.3% of the record 131 million people³ who voted in November’s presidential election, while blacks made up 12.1%, Hispanics 7.4% and Asians 2.5%.⁴ The white share is the lowest ever, yet is still higher than the 65.8% white share of the total U.S. population.

The unprecedented diversity of the electorate last year was driven by increases both in the number and in the turnout rates of minority eligible voters.

The levels of participation by black, Hispanic and Asian eligible voters all increased from 2004 to 2008, reducing the voter participation gap between themselves and white eligible voters. This was particularly true for black eligible voters. Their voter turnout rate increased 4.9 percentage points, from 60.3% in 2004 to 65.3% in 2008, nearly matching the voter turnout rate of white eligible voters (66.1%). For Hispanics, participation levels also increased, with the voter turnout rate rising 2.7 percentage points, from 47.2% in 2004 to 49.9% in 2008. Among Asians, voter participation rates increased from 44.6% in 2004 to 47.0% in 2008. Meanwhile, among white eligible voters, the voter turnout rate fell slightly, from 67.2% in 2004 to 66.1% in 2008.

Much of the surge in black voter participation in 2008 was driven by increased participation among black women and younger voters. The voter turnout rate among eligible black female voters increased 5.1 percentage points, from 63.7% in 2004 to 68.8% in 2008. Overall, among all racial, ethnic and gender groups, black women had the highest voter turnout rate in November’s election — a first.

Blacks ages 18 to 29 increased their voter turnout rate by 8.7 percentage points, from 49.5% in 2004 to 58.2% in 2008, according to an analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University, The voter turnout rate among young black eligible voters was higher than that of young eligible voters of any other racial and ethnic group in 2008. This, too, was a first.

The increased diversity of the electorate was also driven by population growth, especially among Latinos. Between 2004 and 2008, the number of Latino eligible voters rose from 16.1 million in 2004 to 19.5 million in 2008, or 21.4%. In comparison, among the general population, the total number of eligible voters increased by just 4.6%.

In 2008, Latino eligible voters accounted for 9.5% of all eligible voters, up from 8.2% in 2004. Similarly, the share of eligible voters who were black increased from 11.6% in 2004 to 11.8% in 2008. The share of eligible voters who were Asian also increased, from 3.3% in 2004 to 3.4% in 2008. In contrast, the share of eligible voters who were white fell from 75.2% in 2004 to 73.4% in 2008.

With population growth and increased voter participation among blacks, Latinos and Asians, members of all three groups cast more votes in 2008 than in 2004. Two million more blacks and 2 million more Latinos reported voting in 2008 than said the same in 2004. Among Asians, 338,000 more votes were reported cast in 2008 than in 2004. The number of white voters in 2008 was also up, but only slightly — increasing from 99.6 million in 2004 to 100 million in 2008.

The Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data also finds a distinct regional pattern in the state-by-state increases in turnout. From 2004 to 2008, the greatest increases were in Southern states with large black eligible voter populations: Mississippi (where the voter turnout rate was up 8 percentage points), Georgia (7.5 points), North Carolina (6.1 points) and Louisiana (6.0 points). It also increased in the District of Columbia (6.9 points).⁵

According to the exit polls in last year’s presidential election, the candidate preference of non-white voters was distinctly different from that of white voters. Nearly all (95%) black voters cast their ballot for Democrat Barack Obama. Among Latino voters, 67% voted for Obama while 31% voted for Republican John McCain. Among Asian voters, 62% supported Obama and 35% voted for McCain. In contrast, white voters supported McCain (55%) over Obama (43%).

This report summarizes the participation of voters in the 2008 presidential election and follows reports from the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, on the Latino vote and Latino public opinion about the election and the candidates.

The data for this report are derived from the November Voting and Registration Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a monthly survey of about 55,000 households conducted by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The November Voting and Registration Supplement is one of the richest sources available of information about the characteristics of voters. It is conducted after Election Day and relies on survey respondent self-reports of voting and voter registration.

Read the full report (PDF)

<sub>1. The measurement of race in the Current Population Survey changed between November 2000 and November 2004. Prior to 2003, survey respondents could only pick one race, either white, black, American Indian or Alaska Native, or Asian or Pacific Islander. Beginning with all Current Population Surveys in January 2003, survey respondents could identify multiple race categories. As a result, demographic shares based on race for 2000 and earlier are not directly comparable with demographic shares for whites, blacks and Asians in 2004 and 2008. White, black and Asian demographic shares in 2004 and 2008 are for white only, black only, and Asian only populations, and do not include those of mixed race. These changes in the measurement of race do not affect the definition and measurement of the share Hispanic across all years (Suro, Fry and Passel, 2005).
2. In this report, “whites” refer to non-Hispanic whites, “blacks” refer to non-Hispanic blacks and “Asians” refers to non-Hispanic Asians. Hispanics can be of any race.
3. According to the Current Population Survey November 2008 Voting and Registration Supplement, 131.1 million U.S. citizens say they voted in the 2008 presidential election, slightly lower than the 131.3 million votes cast for president as reported by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate (Gans, 2008).
4. The remaining share of voters in 2008 was of other racial or ethnic heritage. This group includes Native Americans and mixed-race voters. In 2008, 1.7% of all voters were of other race or ethnicity, up from 1.5% in 2004.
5. According to Pew Research Center tabulations from the Census Bureau’s 2007 American Community Survey, blacks constitute 35% of eligible voters in Mississippi, 30% in Georgia, 21% in North Carolina, 31% in Louisiana and 58% in the District of Columbia. Nationally, 12.2% of all eligible voters are black.</sub>

Three-quarters (74%) of internet users went online during the 2008 election to take part in, or get news and information about the 2008 campaign. This represents 55% of the entire adult population, and marks the first time the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that more than half the voting-age population used the internet to connect to the political process during an election cycle.

We call these individuals “online political users,” and we employed three separate metrics to identify them:

• Going online for news about politics or the campaign. Fully 60% of internet users did this in 2008.
• Communicating with others about politics using the internet. Some 38% of internet users talked about politics online with others over the course of the campaign.
• Sharing or receiving campaign information using specific tools, such as email, instant messaging, text messages or Twitter. Fully 59% of internet users used one or more of these tools to send or receive political messages.

If a respondent answered “yes” to any of the above questions, s/he was included in the overall population of people we counted as online political users in 2008. Of course, many respondents said “yes” to several of the online activities, but they were counted only once as a member of the online political user group.

This post-election survey finding comes after a similar poll in the spring of 2008. At that time, our survey found than 46% of Americans were online political users. In 2004, using a somewhat different set of metrics to define online political users, we found that they comprised 37% of the adult population.

As the online political news audience has grown, the importance of the internet has increased relative to other news sources.

Six-in-ten internet users went online for news or information about politics in 2008. This represents 44% of all American adults. Nearly one-fifth of the online population got political news on a daily basis during the campaign, as 12% of internet users said they got political news every day and 7% said they did so multiple times over the course of typical day. All told, the overall size of the political news audience has more than doubled since the 2000 elections.

As the overall size of the online political news audience has grown, the internet has taken a front-and-center role within the media environment. Among the entire population, the internet is now on par with newspapers as a major source of campaign news — 26% of all adults get most of their election news from the internet, compared with 28% who get their election news from newspapers — although television remains the dominant source of political news in this country.
For internet users and those under the age of 50, the internet plays an even more central role. Fully 35% of those who use the internet get most of their election news online (compared with 25% who point to newspapers), while 34% of both 18-29 year olds and 30-49 year olds rely on the internet, compared with the 20% of those in each age group who rely on newspapers as a major source of campaign news.

This trend is even more pronounced among those internet users with a broadband connection at home. They are twice as likely to use the internet as they are newspapers to get political news.

Politically-active internet users are moving away from news sites with no point of view to sites that match their politics views; this is especially true among younger voters.

Fully a third of online political users (33%) now say that when they get online political information most of the sites they visit share their point of view — up from 26% who said that in 2004. This rise in partisan information-seeking matches a decline in the number of online political users who say most of the sites they visit do not have a particular point of view. In 2004, 32% of online political users said most of the sites they visited had no particular point of view and that percentage dropped to 25% in 2008. There was no difference between 2004 and 2008 in the number of online political users who said most of the sites they visit challenge their point of view.

Both Democrats and Republicans are now more likely to gravitate towards online sites with an explicitly partisan slant than they were in 2004. Fully 44% of Democratic online political users (up from 34% in 2004) and 35% of Republican online political users (up from 26% in 2006) now say that they mostly visit sites that share their political point of view. However, the biggest change between elections occurred among the young. In 2004, 22% of online political users ages 18-24 said most of the sites they visit shared their views. That doubled to 43% of online political users in that age range in 2008.

Those who are most information hungry are the most likely to browse sites that match their views. Politically interested internet users have access to a wealth of political content online, along with new tools for finding, customizing and filtering highly targeted political commentary. As a result they are delving more deeply into the “long tail” of online political content, where they frequently seek out information that carries a distinct partisan slant and comes from sources beyond traditional news content.

In this survey, we asked online political users whether they got political news or information from 13 specific online sources. Although the most commonly mentioned sources of online political news are traditional media sites, online news consumers also sought out a wide range of non-traditional content — from portal news sites to user-generated content such as blogs and commentary sites. In total, nearly half of online news consumers accessed five or more different online types of news content in 2008.

This greater involvement with the online political debate seems to change some users’ relationship to news content. As online political users get deeper into the world of online politics (whether by visiting a wider range of news sources or taking part in a wider range of political activities) they exhibit a pronounced shift towards news with an explicitly partisan slant.

Obama voters took a leading role engaging in online political activism this election cycle.

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate John McCain were more likely than backers of Barack Obama to be internet users (83% vs. 76%). This reflects the fact that McCain supporters and Republicans in general have higher amounts of education and income than Democrats — and those are two of the strongest predictors of internet use. However, online Obama supporters took part in a wider range of online political activities — from posting their own thoughts and comments about the election online to going online to volunteer for campaign activities or donate money.

In addition to participating in a wider range of online political activities, Obama voters also took the lead in the use of email and text messaging for political communications. Among email users, 48% of Obama voters and 38% of McCain voters received email directly from a political party or candidate for office in 2008. Additionally, among voters who use text messaging:

• 49% of Obama voters shared text messages related to the campaign with others; 29% of McCain voters did so.
• 17% of Obama supporters and 7% of McCain supporters got text messages directly from a candidate or party.

When these two activities are taken together, 22% of all Obama voters (text messaging users and non-users alike) communicated with others about the campaign or got information directly from a campaign or party on their cell phone, compared with 14% of McCain voters.

Nearly one in five internet users belongs to the online political participatory class.

Voters are increasingly taking an active role in the political process by contributing their own thoughts or comments to the online debate. In 2008, nearly one in five internet users posted their thoughts, comments or questions about the campaign on a website, blog, social networking site or other online forum.

This online participatory class is composed largely of politically active young adults — fully 30% of those who post political content online are under the age of 25, and more than half are younger than 35. Political content creation is also tightly linked with the use of social media platforms such as online social networks, video sharing sites, blogs and status update services such as Twitter.

Young Americans engage most deeply in the online political process, but online political involvement is something all generations do to some extent.

More than half of the internet users in every major age cohort took part in the political process in one way or another during the 2008 campaign. Indeed, the oldest Americans (those individuals age 65 and older) are the only age cohort for which substantially fewer than half of all members of that cohort are online political users. This is due to the relatively low levels of internet usage by seniors — although 60% of online seniors are online political users, just 37% of seniors use the internet. As a result, 22% of the entire senior population got engaged politically online in 2008. For other age groups (including those only slightly younger than age 65) half or more of all adults took part in the online political process in 2008.

Although online political involvement is widely dispersed throughout the population, young adults tend to be the most intense of the online political user cohort. Online political users under the age of 30 are much more likely than other age groups to:

• Get customized political or campaign news (as through an RSS feed, automated email updates or a customized web page).
•  Post their own original content online.
• Take part in political activities on social networking sites.

However, other online political activities are far from dominated by the youngest of online political users. While two-thirds of online political users under the age of 30 watch online political videos, this activity is relatively popular among other age groups as well. And online political users in all age groups are equally likely to share or forward interesting political nuggets to others. Indeed, older online political users are actually the group that is most likely to forward political content or commentary to others. Since seniors are regular users of email in other contexts (such as communicating with family members) it is a small leap for these individuals to share political content.

Technology helped Americans to navigate the voting process and share their experiences at the polls.

In addition to using technology to help make sense of the campaign, voters also went online to help prepare for Election Day and to share their experiences at the polls. Fully 26% of all wired voters used the internet to help them navigate the voting process, as one in five (18%) went online to find out where to vote; 16% did so for information about absentee or early voting; and one in ten (9%) went online to find out if they were registered to vote. Young voters and those who were politically involved online during the campaign were especially likely to turn to the internet for assistance with the voting process.

Voters also jumped at the opportunity to share their experiences on Election Day with others, mainly in person and over the telephone but also using digital technologies such as email, text messaging and social networking sites. Again, young voters were especially likely to go online to share their voting day experiences relative to older voters.

These results come from a national telephone survey of 2,254 American adults between November 20 and December 4, 2008. Some 1,591 of them are internet users and 1,186 are those we call online political users. This sample was gathered entirely on landline phones. There was no extra sample of cell-phone users, who tend to be younger and slightly more likely to be internet users.

Read the full report at pewinternet.org.

A year and a half after a lengthy, often rancorous debate over immigration reform filled the chambers of a stalemated Congress, the issue appears to have receded in importance among one of the groups most affected by it — Latinos.

Only three-in-ten (31%) Latinos rate immigration as an “extremely important” issue facing the incoming Obama administration, placing it sixth on a list of seven policy priorities that respondents were asked to assess in a nationwide survey of 1,007 Latino adults conducted from December 3 to December 10, 2008 by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

The top-rated issue among Latinos is the economy; 57% of Hispanics say it is an extremely important issue for the new president to address. Education, health care, national security and the environment all also rate higher than immigration as a policy priority among Hispanics, while energy policy ranks lower.

Latinos, who make up 15% of the U.S. population, are by far the nation’s biggest immigrant group. According to Pew Hispanic Center tabulations of the 2006 American Community Survey, more than half (55%) of Latinos ages 18 and older are immigrants, and 47% of all immigrants ages 18 and older are Hispanic. Even at the apex of the congressional debate over immigration reform in 2007, however, the issue never rose to the top of Latinos’ priority list. Of six issues asked of Latinos in a 2007 Pew Hispanic Center survey¹, it ranked fifth. But back then, 38% of Hispanics judged immigration to be an extremely important issue — more than the 31% who say the same thing in the new survey.

Moreover, in an open-ended question on this latest survey, just 6% of Latino respondents who voted in the 2008 election cited immigration as the issue that mattered most to them as they went to the polls. Five times as many named the economy (31%). Higher shares also named candidate attributes (14%) and a general desire for change (13%). In last year’s presidential election, Latino voters supported Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin by more than two-to-one — 67% to 31%.²

The immigration issue has fallen in importance since 2007 among the general population as well. While 56% of all registered voters cited immigration as a very important issue in 2007³, this share fell to 49% in late 2008⁴.

The latest Pew Hispanic Center survey also explored attitudes among Latinos about the incoming Obama administration and the outgoing Bush administration, and it examined a range of political activities that Latinos engaged in during the historic 2008 presidential campaign. Among its other key findings:

• In last year’s presidential election, Latino voters were more than twice as likely as voters in the general population to be first-time voters — 21% versus 8%. Among Latino voters ages 18-29, 47% were first-time voters.
• Hispanics are optimistic about the incoming Barack Obama administration. More than seven-in-ten (72%) say they expect Obama to have a successful first term.
• More than half (54%) of Latinos say that the failures of the Bush administration will outweigh its successes. In comparison, 64% of the U.S. general population holds the same view.
• About three-fourths (74%) of Latinos say they were more interested in last year’s presidential election than in the 2004 election.
• Three-in-four (75%) Latinos say they were satisfied with the field of presidential candidates in 2008.
• Overall, 83% of Hispanic voters say they learned enough from the campaigns to make informed choices.
• Almost four-in-ten (38%) Latinos say they were contacted and encouraged to register to vote or to get out to vote.

• Among Latinos contacted in the 2008 election campaign, 59% say they were contacted by the Obama campaign, while 43% say they were contacted by the McCain campaign.
• Television was the most popular conduit of news about the 2008 presidential campaign among Latinos. More than eight-in-ten (82%) report obtaining most of their election news through television. Eighteen percent used newspapers to get most of their election news, 18% used the internet for most of their news, and 10% of all Latinos obtained most of their campaign news through radio. In addition, 21% of respondents report getting at least some election news from the internet.
• Almost one-quarter (23%) of Latinos who obtained campaign information from television report that the information was in Spanish, while one-third (33%) got their television news in English; 44% obtained television news about the election in both languages.
• More than half (51%) of Latinos say they participated in at least one political activity other than voting during the 2008 election season. More than one-third (36%) say they used the internet to research a candidate; 26% tried to persuade someone to vote for or against a particular party; 18% say they displayed material or wore clothing related to a political campaign; 11% say they attended a political or campaign-related event; 9% say they contributed money to a candidate; and 5% say they volunteered or worked for a political candidate.
• Forty-four percent of Hispanics say that the recent election has made them more likely to participate in politics in the future.

This report is based on two bilingual telephone surveys. The first, the 2008 National Survey of Latinos, Economics and Politics, is a nationally representative sample of 1,540 Hispanics ages 18 and older. Interviews were conducted from November 11 through November 30, 2008. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 3.0 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

The second survey, the Pew Hispanic Center 2008 Politics Omnibus, was conducted among a nationally representative sample of 1,007 Latino respondents ages 18 and older, from December 3 through December 10, 2008. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For a full description of methodologies for both surveys, see the full report.

Read the full report at pewhispanic.org.

Notes

¹ “Hispanics and the 2008 Election: A Swing Vote?” Pew Hispanic Center, Dec. 6, 2007.

² “The Hispanic Vote in the 2008 Election,” Pew Hispanic Center, Nov. 5, 2008.

³ “A Year Ahead, Republicans Face Tough Political Terrain,” Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Oct. 31, 2007.

⁴ “Growing Doubts About McCain’s Judgment, Age and Campaign Conduct,” Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Oct. 21, 2008.

To address this challenge, the Pew Research Center for the People & The Press included cell phone samples in all of its fall election polls, and many other major pollsters took similar steps. All of the Pew Research Center’s election survey reports were based on data from both landline and cell phone interviews, using a methodology described below. The addition of cell phone interviewing had at most a modest effect on estimates of candidate support in most of those individual surveys. When looked at in the aggregate, however, clear patterns emerge.

This study describes the differences between estimates of the horse race and other political measures that Pew reported this fall with those that would have been derived from surveys conducted only by landline. It also addresses the difference between supplementing landline surveys with a sample of people who are “cell only” vs. interviewing all cell respondents even if they also have a landline phone. In this regard there is growing concern that some people have come to rely so heavily on a cell phone that even though they still have a landline telephone they are virtually unreachable on it. Finally, this report describes the operational and cost issues raised by the inclusion of cell phones.

Download the complete report

Meanwhile, there was little attempt by the news media during the campaign to comprehensively examine the role of faith in the political values and policies of the candidates, save for those of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

And when religion-focused campaign stories were covered by the mainstream press, often the context was negative, controversial or focused on a perceived political problem.

In all, religion was a significant but not overriding storyline in the media coverage of the 2008 campaign. But in a campaign in which an Obama victory would give the U.S. its first black president, religion received as much coverage in the media as race.

These are some of the findings of a new study of the coverage of religion in the campaign conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The study examined religion-focused election coverage in 48 different news outlets between June 1 and Oct. 15, 2008.

The “culture war” issues that have been prominent in past elections, such as abortion and gay marriage, received minimal attention in 2008. The coverage they did receive tended to come in the form of reaction to statements by the candidates and quickly receded without generating any sustained narrative. When Palin was introduced to the nation as McCain’s running mate, her parenting choices raised the issue of abortion, but only momentarily. In one of the more episodic narratives — evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s presidential forum held at his church — the candidates’ answers on a question about abortion gained attention in the press the week of the event.

But the religious electorate — including evangelical voters — received relatively scant attention from the press during the general election, despite the Obama campaign’s aggressive outreach efforts and the subsequent gains made among these religious groups on Election Day.

Among the key findings:

• Press narratives tied to religion accounted for 4% of the general election campaign’s “newshole” — the time or space available in an outlet for news content. While this was less than coverage of the Iraq war (6%) or the economic crisis (9%), it was more prominent than coverage of energy issues (2%) and the environment (less than 1%), and equal to coverage of the Republican National Convention (4%). During the general election, storylines related to religion received as much attention by the press as those that focused on race (4%).
• Far more of the religion storylines involved Obama, and most of these involved controversy or had an unfavorable cast. In all, Obama was the lead newsmaker in more than half (53%) of the religion-focused campaign stories. By contrast, McCain was the focus of just 9%. Palin (19%) was more tied to religion than her running mate, though less so than Obama. Examination of Palin’s family values, church background and related issues made up one-fourth of the newshole devoted to religion in the campaign.
• The single biggest religion storyline in the general election phase of the campaign centered on rumors that the Democratic nominee, who is a mainline Protestant Christian, is a Muslim (30%). An additional 5% of the religion-focused coverage dealt with evangelical broadcaster James Dobson’s criticism of Obama’s positions. But despite the largely negative focus of the Obama religion coverage, a Pew Forum analysis of exit polls shows nearly every religious group measured supported him in greater numbers than they supported Democratic nominee John Kerry four years ago.
• The notion of “pastor problems,” or candidates’ associations with controversial religious figures, was a clear narrative in campaign coverage. All four candidates faced coverage focusing on religious figures. Attention to clerics Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger and John Hagee alone made up 11% of religion coverage in the general election. A feature of much of this coverage was replaying of the inflammatory recorded words and video images of these ministers. Circulated on cable news, talk radio and the Internet, these recordings were used to scrutinize the candidates’ judgment in associating with such figures.
• The Aug. 16 Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, moderated by Warren at his California megachurch, drew brief but intense media coverage. It made up 10% of all campaign coverage the week it occurred but quickly dropped to 5% the following week. By the end of August, it was no longer a major press topic at all. Still, that was enough to have that one event account for 11% of religion-focused campaign coverage in the general election.
• Culture war issues were not a driving narrative of this election cycle. The extent to which they were present, they emerged late in the campaign and were largely tied to the nomination of Palin. Together, social issues – including abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research — composed 9% of religion-focused campaign news but less than 1% of campaign news overall.

The study examined 7,592 campaign stories from 48 news outlets during the general election, from June 1, 2008, the week that the primaries ended and Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign, to Oct. 15, 2008, the day of the last presidential debate. The 283 stories in which religion played a significant role were analyzed in greater depth. This study builds on an earlier one jointly conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum that examined media coverage of religion in the primary campaign.That earlier study is in some cases referred to here for comparison.

For the full report and methodology see pewforum.org.

In the last three general elections – 2004, 2006, and 2008 — young voters have given the Democratic Party a majority of their votes, and for all three cycles they have been the party’s most supportive age group. This year, 66% of those under age 30 voted for Barack Obama making the disparity between young voters and other age groups larger than in any presidential election since exit polling began in 1972.

This pattern of votes, along with other evidence about the political leanings of young voters, suggests that a significant generational shift in political allegiance is occurring. This pattern has been building for several years, and is underscored among voters this year. Among voters ages 18-29, a 19-point gap now separates Democratic party affiliation (45%) and Republican affiliation (26%). In 2000, party affiliation was split nearly evenly among the young.

Young voters are more diverse racially and ethnically than older voters and more secular in their religious orientation. These characteristics, as well as the climate in which they have come of age politically, incline them not only toward Democratic Party affiliation but also toward greater support of activist government, greater opposition to the war in Iraq, less social conservatism, and a greater willingness to describe themselves as liberal politically.

Young people were not, however, crucial to Barack Obama’s victory, according to the exit polls. Obama would have lost Indiana and North Carolina, but carried other key states such as Ohio and Florida, as well as the national vote. But young people provided not only their votes but also many enthusiastic campaign volunteers. Some may have helped persuade parents and older relatives to consider Obama’s candidacy. And far more young people than older voters reported attending a campaign event while nearly one-in-ten donated money to a presidential candidate.

While Obama captured 66% of the youth vote, compared with McCain’s 31%, voters age 30 and older divided roughly evenly between the two candidates. Among those ages 18-29, Obama took a majority among whites (54%-44%), and captured more than three-fourths of young Hispanic voters (76%-19%). However, among both younger and older voters, there was no difference in the vote of those with college experience and those without.

As with older voters, a gender gap appears in young voters’ support for the Democratic ticket: 69% of younger women voted Democratic, compared with 62% of comparably aged men.

Describing the Young Voter

One of the most striking features of young voters is their racial and ethnic diversity. Just 62% of voters age 18-29 identify as white, while 18% are black and 14% Hispanic. Four years ago, this age group was 68% white. In 2000, nearly three-quarters (74%) of young voters were white.

Women significantly outnumber men among younger voters, constituting 55% of those 18-29 and 30-44. Among voters ages 45-64, 52% are female, while 51% of voters age 65 and older are women.

Compared with those age 30 and older, fewer young voters say they are affiliated with a religious tradition (16% vs. 12% overall), and fewer report regular attendance at worship services. Among all voters, 40% attend religious services weekly or more often; among those 18-29, just 33% do so.

Party Identification and Issues

The Democrats’ overall advantage in party identification in the 2008 election was driven in large part by the strong Democratic leaning of young voters. Voters ages 18-29 were by far the most Democratic age cohort in the election; 45% identified as Democrats, compared with smaller percentages who identified as Republican (26%) or independent (29%). Older voters also tilted Democratic this year, though by nowhere near the margin found among those under age 30.

The party gap among young voters has expanded over the last four years. Since 2004, Democratic identification among voters under age 30 has increased 8 points, while Republican identification has fallen by 9 points. The percentage of young voters declining to identify with either of the two major parties remained stable at 29%.

In 2000, young voters were about evenly split between the two parties: 36% Democratic, 35% Republican. Notably, young voters were actually somewhat less Democratic than older voters in 2000. For example, those age 65 and older were 4 points more likely than the youngest slice of the electorate to be Democrats.

Consistent with their strong Obama vote and their Democratic Party affiliation, young voters were distinctively liberal in their views on several policy questions. Yet they were similar to older voters in the relative importance of different issues to their vote.

Young voters differ most from older voters in their liberal views on the proper scope of government. Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) of voters ages 18-29 favor an expanded role for government, agreeing that it should do more to solve problems; fewer (27%) say the government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals. Opinion on this question is more closely divided among older age cohorts and a narrow plurality of those age 45 and older says government is doing too much.

Young voters also stand out for their opinions on the Iraq war and offshore drilling. A wide 77%- majority of voters under age 30 disapprove of the U.S. war in Iraq, making them at least 15 points more negative on the war than older age groups. While the public as a whole disapproves of the war, opinion is less lopsided with 36% approving of the war. Young voters have soured considerably on the war over the past four years; in 2004, 52% approved of the original decision to use military force against Iraq, and at that time, young voters’ opinions mirrored those of the larger voting public.

While voters overall favor offshore drilling by a margin of more than two-to-one (68% to 28%), those under age 30 express somewhat less support for offshore drilling than do older voters. Yet even so, a 57%-majority of young voters favors drilling for oil in U.S. waters where it is currently not allowed. Fully 72% of those ages 45-64, and 74% of those age 65 and older support increased oil production in U.S. waters.

Nearly a third of young voters (32%) describe themselves as liberal, compared with 22% of all voters. Those under 30 are about as likely as all voters to call themselves moderate, but are significantly less likely to identify as conservative: just over a quarter (26%) of young voters do so. By contrast, voters in older age cohorts are much more likely to call themselves conservative as opposed to liberal.

Despite holding more liberal views on many issues, young voters share the same issue priorities as the electorate at large. More than six-in-ten (61%) young voters see the economy as the nation’s most important problem, about the same share as among the general voting public; the war in Iraq is a distant second on the minds of young voters — as it is among all voters — with 12% naming it the country’s top problem. Voters under age 30 differ somewhat from all voters in viewing energy policy (10% top problem) as a more pressing issue than terrorism (5% top problem); other age cohorts generally consider the issues to be of similar importance or give a slight priority to terrorism.

Mobilization and Turnout

In addition to providing Barack Obama and other Democrats with strong support this year, young voters were unusually active in the campaign. According to Pew’s post-election survey of voters, fully 28% of young voters in battleground states said they had attended a campaign event, far more than among other age groups. They were less likely than older voters to contribute money to the campaign, but according to the survey nearly one-in-ten (9%) did so, compared with the overall average of 17%.

But the electoral influence of young voters also depends on efforts made to mobilize them. According to the exit polls, young voters in key battleground states this year were far more likely to have been contacted by the Obama campaign than by the McCain campaign – and in some states they were more likely than older voters to have been contacted, a significant reversal from past patterns.

Nationally, a quarter of voters (25%) 18-29 say someone contacted them in person or by phone on behalf of the Obama campaign about coming out to vote. By contrast, just 13% were contacted by the McCain campaign. In 2004, nearly the same share of young voters was reached by the Kerry campaign (22%) as was reached by the Bush campaign (19%).

But the disparity was much larger in some of the key battleground states. In Pennsylvania and Nevada, which Obama carried by double-digit margins, more than half of voters under age 30 said they were contacted by the Obama campaign (54% in Pennsylvania and 61% in Nevada). The McCain campaign reached considerably fewer young voters in those states — 30% in Pennsylvania and 26% in Nevada. Obama’s get-out-the-vote operation also reached three times as many young voters as McCain’s operation in Indiana (45% vs. 15%) and twice as many in Florida (32% vs. 16%).

The Obama campaign also reached more voters than the McCain campaign across some older age groups, though the advantage was generally more modest than that among 18-29 year-olds. In North Carolina, for example, 46% of voters under age 30 reported being contacted by someone in the Obama campaign about coming out to vote, compared with 29% who reported being contacted by the McCain campaign. However, Obama’s get-out-the-vote advantage narrows somewhat among those ages 30-44 (11 points) and ages 45-64 (6 points) and completely disappears among those age 65 and older (29% each).

With the exception of Virginia, Nevada, and Wisconsin, the two campaigns were about even in their efforts to turn out voters age 65 and older in the swing states. Obama reached far more older voters than McCain in Virginia (55% vs. 45%) and Nevada (47% vs. 38%), while McCain reached more voters age 65 and older in Wisconsin (58% vs. 46%).

Official estimates of voter turnout among age groups won’t be available for several months, but the exit polls indicate that mobilization efforts aimed at young people may have paid off. Voters ages 18-29 turned out at a higher rate in 2008 than in 2004 in several battleground states. Young voters increased their share of the total electorate by five points in Indiana, four points in North Carolina and Virginia — all of which experienced sizeable increases in overall voter turnout — and by lesser amounts in six other key states. By contrast, the young declined as a share of the total in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Nationally, young voters were estimated to be 18% of the total, up slightly from 17% four years ago.

Notes

¹ Scott Keeter is also an exit poll analyst for NBC News.