Media perception of evangelicals

March 4, 2008

politics

From the AP, posted on Yahoo:

On the Republican side in Ohio, John McCain — poised to claim his party’s nomination — was leading easily among loyal Republicans and conservatives. He and his chief remaining rival, Mike Huckabee, were splitting white evangelical and born-again voters roughly evenly.

It’s really annoying to me that, in spite of significant shifts that are occurring in the evangelical world, the media still does not try to find out how evangelicals vote on the Democratic side. The media still assumes that all evangelicals and “born-again” voters will vote for Republican candidates.

The detriment that this notion causes to the perception of evangelicals is well-documented, especially in recent books and the blogosphere. While it is true enough that Republicans are still wrongly perceived as the “Christian” party, it clearly is not as widely held a perception as it was four years ago.