Religion and the 2012 SC GOP Presidential Primary

1. Religion and the 2012 SC GOP Presidential Primary The elephant in the elephant’s living room Bob Botsch USC Aiken

2. Factors that contributed to Newt Gingrich’s victory • Tapped into anger of SC Republicans • Attacked “liberal” media—a favorite enemy of the right • Debate performances suggesting that that Newt had the strength to attack and defeat Obama • Ideology in that he successfully labeled Romney as a “Massachusetts Moderate” • Claims that as Speaker he helped turn welfare into workfare, balance the budget, and grow the economy • Southern identification as Georgia professor • “Born again” Catholic who confessed his sins

3. Religious factor less discussed • Would Southern Christian fundamentalists (labeled as “evangelicals” by the national media) be willing to vote for a Mormon? • Some polling evidence from 2010 Republican voters in Aiken County that this would be a problem • 36% self-id as “religious fundamentalists” • 33% said “candidate’s religion very important in their voting choice • 56% said very or moderately important • Of GOP fundamentalists, 60% said “very important”

4. Baptists and Fundamentalists • Because many (but not all) fundamentalists are Southern Baptists, we might approximate the percentage of fundamentalists & evangelicals in a county by the percentage of members of the mostly all white Southern Baptist Convention members in a county’s population

5. Baptists in SC Counties

6. Romney Vote In SC Counties

7. Baptists and Romney VoteHyp: % Baptists negatively related to Romney voter = -.55; p < 0.001

8. Regression Approacha similar picture

9. Not first time religion played a role in SC Voting • In 2008, many white SC voters misidentified Obama as Muslim • In Aiken County, only 32% of all white voters correctly identified him as Protestant • 24% saw him as Muslim (by a 4/3 ratio, white fundamentalists were more likely to see him as Muslim than as Protestant) • He won 33% of the votes of whites who knew he was Protestant • He lost 96% of the votes of whites who saw him as Muslim

10. Conclusions • While correlation does not mean causation, the data do lend strong support to the hypothesis that religious Republican fundamentalists (many of whom are Southern Baptists) were very reluctant to support a Mormon in the 2012 presidential primary. • Many voters said they were uncomfortable with Romney—many possible reasons to be uncomfortable, but it is highly suggestive that counties with the most discomfort were those with a high percentage of Southern Baptists • Exit polling showed that among non-evangelicals, Romney won over Gingrich 38 to 33%, but lost 44 to 22% among evangelicals (see http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Religion-and-the-2012-South-Carolina-Republican-Primary.aspx ) • Clearly, a half century after we elected our first Catholic, Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists in SC are willing to support a Catholic like Newt Gingrich. • But not a Mormon • Many SC voters ignore the spirit of the Constitution, Article VI: “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office”

11. History and the Question for Romney • Looking back at 1960, we see a parallel to what JFK faced in the critical West Virginia primary, where Kennedy’s staff knew that religion was this issue—would Protestant West Virginians vote for a Catholic? • The staff was divided with most too fearful to raise the explosive issue • JFK decided to take in on directly and make the issue a test of religious tolerance—wavering voters could vote JFK and prove they were tolerant—his opponent, Hubert Humphrey, had no defense for this. (Teddy White, Making of the Presidency 1960, pp. 126-8) • Certainly Romney’s staff knows this • But does he have the courage to do what JFK did?