Church-parking-lot leafleting on the final weekend flipped three 1978 Senate races

Evidence

In Iowa, for example, polls and pundits expected that the incumbent Democratic senator, Richard C. “Dick” Clark, would coast easily to reelection; no poll heading into the November balloting indicated that Clark held a lead of fewer than ten percentage points. Six years earlier, Clark had walked across the state to call attention to his grassroots, upstart challenge to Jack Miller, the two-term Republican incumbent, and Clark prevailed with 55 percent of the vote. He remained a popular figure in the state. Antiabortion activists, however, had targeted Clark, and on the final weekend of Clark’s reelection campaign, representatives of Iowans for Life (predominantly Roman Catholics) distributed approximately 300,000 pamphlets in church parking lots. Two days later, in a low-turnout election, Roger Jepsen, the Republican pro-life challenger, defeated Clark. An election day survey by the Des Moines Register indicated that about twenty-five thousand Iowans voted for Jepsen because of his stand on abortion. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 126 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A 300,000-pamphlet church-lot leafleting effort flipped Iowa’s Senate race — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 126; About 25,000 Iowa voters were swayed by abortion in the 1978 Senate race — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 128

Related

• A 300,000-pamphlet church-lot leafleting effort flipped Iowa’s Senate race (similarity 0.91)
• About 25,000 Iowa voters were swayed by abortion in the 1978 Senate race (similarity 0.90)

Broader Connections

• A 300,000-pamphlet church-lot leafleting effort flipped Iowa’s Senate race #exemplifies (0.95) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 126