When I was growing up I thought that all Irish Americans were Catholic and that all Irish Catholics were, as my father liked to call us, “good solid Democrats.”  Then, around the time I was in middle school, something strange happened.  My grandparents, who absolutely idolized JFK, RFK, and all things Kennedy, voted for Ronald Reagan.

It turns out that they were part of a trend, and that (as everyone knows) in the years since the Reagan Revolution the Catholic vote has turned steadily Republican, as churchgoing Catholics have become allied with Evangelicals and other more conservative Protestants to become a bloc known as “Values Voters.”  There has been much talk this election cycle about whether Values Voters are going to remain a cohesive group, or split into factions, or even swing Democrat.  The polling has been, at best, equivocal and unconvincing.  We hear about “emerging” Evangelicals and young Hispanics swinging one direction, while older Catholics and those who attend church weekly (rather than monthly) swing another.

Now, the Wall Street Journal tells us that it is “white bread Protestants” (which, by their definition, is about 18 percent of the population), who may well decide the election.  If I were being cheeky, I might say that if feels good to at last be in a demographic that counts.  But the larger point is that it seems there are more ways to slice the electoral pie this year than ever before.  If you have still have a stomach for analyzing polling data, read on.

The Pew Research Center did a poll earlier this month that has garnered attention from several media outlets.  The results suggest, as CNN puts it, that “religious voters appear to be gradually gravitating toward Barack Obama as their pick for president.”  Some argue that this trend is nothing more than voters focusing on their financial well-being rather than their religious beliefs; in other words, the thinking goes that these “religious voters” are leaning toward Obama in spite of the influence of their faith, because of pocketbook and other issues that some might see as unrelated to “values” as they’re traditionally defined (think Culture Wars versus It’s-the-Economy-Stupid thinking).  This UPI article that ran on Beliefnet is a pretty typical articulation of this way of looking at things.

A different analysis of the same information leads to a completely different conclusion.  Some reports, such as this one by Ed Stoddard from Reuters, give credit to

“Obama’s strong emphasis on his personal Christian faith in the earlier stages of the campaign and his team’s outreach programs aimed at evangelicals and other religious groups [which] seem to be paying off.”

It seems that it could be precisely because these the so-called Values Voters see Obama’s policies as more in line with their religious views that they are considering voting for him. In this argument, issues such as global warming, healthcare for the uninsured, and poverty reduction simply rate higher on the values scale than abortion or gay marriage.  An article about people who are torn between the two agendas, and who show an understanding that “neither candidate will ever line up 100 percent with the Gospel,” is well worth the read.

Another survey, this one telling titled “The Young and the Faithful” was released by Faith in Public Life and conducted by Public Religion Research(PRR), according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor. It involved interviews with people ages 18 to 34 and also seemed to hold good news for Democrats.  The takeaway message from that seems to be that

“Younger Americans, including young Americans of faith, are not the culture-war generation,” says Robert Jones, president of PRR. [...] For instance, young adults are more open to religious diversity and cooperation, they are less likely to say that one has to believe in God to be moral, and they believe good diplomacy rather than military strength is the best way to promote peace, says Dr. Jones.

Obviously, we won’t know about any of this for sure until after Election Day.  Just as obviously, thinsg have gotten a lot more complicated than they were when I was in seventh grade–or maybe it’s just that polls are springing up like mushrooms and every third person in the country seems to be part of a “focus group.”  All I know for sure is that I wish my Irish Catholic grandfather were still around to see this one play out.