A quarter of white evangelicals broke ranks to vote for Obama in 2008

Evidence

SEVENTY-FOUR PERCENT of white evangelicals voted for the McCain/Palin ticket. But 24 percent of white evangelicals—up 4 percent from 2004—broke ranks and voted for Obama. The Obama campaign had targeted moderate white evangelicals, the sort who had been voting Republican for twenty years but who wanted to expand the list of “moral values” to include things like poverty, climate change, human rights, and the environment. Obama doubled his support among white evangelicals ages eighteen to twenty-nine compared to Kerry’s in 2004, and nearly doubled his support among those ages thirty to forty-four. Scholars and pundits alike started to declare the end of the culture wars, and to look ahead to “the end of white Christian America.” The old guard was shaken. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 533