Obama’s Christian Support — Triple McCain’s? February 13, 2008

The very Christian G-dTube.com just released the results of its 2008 Election Poll. The results?

Obama received 26% of the votes cast on the site, with McCain receiving a mere 9%. Huckabee, the preferred candidate in the Evangelical camp, won an expected — with 46%. Hillary trails at nearly 19% — still double McCain’s rating.

The site is considered a good bellwether, garnering over 3 million views a month.

Now, The Faith in Public Life forum did release data Monday that put, in Tennessee and Missouri, Clinton higher than Obama among white evangelical voters. Obama’s being preferred by 37% of said voters roundly surpassed McCain’s 25% in Missouri, however — it was only in Tennessee that Obama was defeated by McCain, 30% to 12%.

Part of me would really like to believe that white Tennessee voters have a harder time rallying behind a Black man than white Missouri voters (37%-20%), but the reality is that this vote was not broken out demographically.  Obama has led Clinton by “double-digit” margins with whites under 30 in ten states so far. This probably explains the discrepancies in G-dTube.com’s data versus the exit polling by the Faith in Public Life forum: the internet demographic just skews younger in general — even Christianity Today said their “informal online polling” showed Obama “way ahead” of Hillary in Tennessee and Missouri with white Christian voters.

BeliefNet’s poll of Evangelical voters (devout voters at that, 48% go to church every week, 87% view Billy Graham favorably) showed Obama leading Clinton 31% to 12% among Democrats. John McCain was preferred by 21%. And over 60% of voters said they viewed Hillary “unfavorably”.

The Beliefnet poll actually was heavy on middle-aged voters: 37.8% of respondents were aged 18-45, 38.8% were aged 45-59. Clinton, however, has led Obama, according to the Washington Post, by “double-digit” margins with over-65 voters in 17 states.  One in four voters in the Beliefnet poll was over 60.

In general, Democratic evangelical support is growing with 40% of born again voters in one poll saying that, were the election held today, they would vote for the “Democratic candidate”. (Clinton led Obama by a mere two points in this poll, but see here for the difference in methodology between that poll and the above FPL survey.)

Obama is gaining support across the board — especially with young people, and the evangelical community is no exception. May it be the Will of our Father in Heaven that nothing stop the Obama-mentum.