Bush got big vote from white evangelicals
___WASHINGTON (BP)--White evangelical Christians voted in significantly higher numbers for George W. Bush in the 2000 election than they did for the Republican Party presidential candidate four years before, according to a recently released survey.
___White evangelicals who attend church regularly supported Bush with 84 percent of their votes last November, while GOP candidate Bob Dole received 70 percent of their votes in 1996, according to the Associated Press.
___In a news conference Jan. 25, lead pollster John Green of the University of Akron said this shift was the most dramatic one in the poll as contrasted with one conducted in 1996.
___Even more than before, the group of religious bodies voting for a Republican for president consisted of white Protestants and Roman Catholics, plus Mormons, who attend worship weekly, the article reported. The Democratic religious coalition consisted, in order of strength, of black Protestants, Jews and other non-Christians, Hispanic Catholics, Hispanic Protestants, people who describe themselves as totally secular and Catholics who do not attend mass weekly, according to the article.
___The poll said the divisions between active as opposed to inactive church members and religious versus secular Americans are more significant than the splits between denominations, the article reported. Among Catholics, 57 percent of weekly worshippers who voted supported Bush, while 59 percent of less-observant Catholics backed Democratic candidate Al Gore. Regular worshippers are much more likely to vote than less religiously active citizens, Green said, according to the article.
The Baptist Standard
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