The Evangelical Vote

We mentioned earlier that we were going to be looking at Huckabee’s surprise showing last night.  While Huckabee’s success last night was no doubt bolstered by evangelicals, polls suggest that despite what many in the media have been saying, evangelicals are not necessarily a unified voting block.  Our polling director Gary Langer points out that last night "evangelicals were not monolithic," and that in many ways their vote split among Huckabee, McCain, and Romney, suggesting that their agenda is perhaps broadening past traditional social issues like abortion and gay marriage.

John Donvan responded to this subject in an email to our political unit:

In many ways, it’s long been a mistake to describe evangelicals as capital-E Evangelicals — as a monolithic block of voters, consumers, thinkers, worshippers, or whatever. There has always been greater diversity in evangelical ranks than the one-word label suggests, and while use of that label may simplify life for pollsters, the habit has made it easy to miss the point. There is no "Evangelicals," but rather people who are evangelical, and now we may see some voting results that underline this.