Did the Christian Right abandon the Republican Party last week?

According to this report, not exactly: Some evangelical Christians reconsider their faith in GOP by Matthai Chakko Kuruvila San Francisco Chronicle 11/13/06. Kuruvila reports:

Exit polls in 2004 revealed that 74 percent of white evangelicals voted for Republicans and 25 percent for Democrats. On Tuesday, Republicans received 70 percent of the white evangelical vote and Democrats got 28 percent, only a slight change.

White evangelicals accounted for roughly 24 percent of the electorate, about the same as their proportion of the population.

"A great deal had been written about the discouragement of white evangelicals and how they might not turn out," said John Green, senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. "This important element of the Republican electoral base held firm. They showed up in large numbers and voted Republican."

It was with other Christians that Democrats made their largest gains. National exit polls showed that Democrats made inroads with weekly churchgoers, cutting the Republican advantage in this group from 18 percentage points in 2004 to 12 points on Tuesday. And Democrats won the Catholic vote, which they did not do in the last congressional election. (my emphasis)

In other words, the fundis stuck with Bush and his authoritarian Republican Party. Given the central role the Iraq War played in this campaign, Pew's finding is consistent with the polls showing that fundamentalist Christians are basically the only significant group left who still support the Iraq War.

| +Save/Share | |