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TechnoratiEvangelical voters are again playing a key role in the 2008 presidential election, causing both major political parties to redouble their efforts to court the important voting group.
Dave Jeffers, the author of Understanding Evangelicals: A Guide to Jesusland, spoke to The Christian Post this week about how evangelical voters think and what they are looking for in next U.S. president.
CP: What is Jesusland?
Jeffers: It actually came from a disparagement that I found on the Internet after the 2004 election when the primary reason given of why people re-elected President Bush was values. So immediately after that there was this map called Jesusland and it showed the United States and Canada. Jesusland is basically the heartland of the United States.
What I was doing [in the book] was trying to explain to people what motivates evangelicals to vote the way they do and why we take stance on certain issues because it just doesn’t seem like people understand who we are and why we vote and take the stance we do.
So that is where it came from. I didn’t come up with it on my own.
CP: Many people have commented that evangelicals are not a monolithic group – there are conservative, liberal and centralist evangelicals – how is it possible to know how evangelicals vote when they are not one group?
Jeffers: The first thing I tried to do in my book is explain who are evangelicals because you are right, there are so many definitions and so many types of people who call themselves that. I go with the traditional view of evangelicals, those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, salvation comes only through regeneration through Jesus Christ, and that we are commanded to go forth and spread the Gospel.
You put those three things out there and many people who describe themselves as evangelicals might not own up to all three of those points.
I tried to narrow it down and that is when I said there are nearly 7 million evangelicals who did not vote in 2004. That was based off of that definition of a more narrow, conservative form of evangelicalism.
CP: How did you find out there was 7 million evangelicals that didn’t vote?
Jeffers: I went to the Barna Research Web Site and it had its own definition of a broader born-again Christian and what he described as evangelicals. Of that group of evangelicals, 80 percent that fell in that group voted in 2004. So there is a 20 percent of a more traditionalist evangelical that did not vote.
I looked at the numbers and did the math and it came out to 6.75 million, nearly 7 million evangelicals that didn’t vote in 2004.
CP: Do you know why these 7 million evangelicals didn’t vote in 2004?
Jeffers: I couldn’t really find a lot of information on that. But I would imagine that
80 percent is quite high (evangelicals); if we had an 80 percent voter turnout in America that would be phenomenal because we only had 55 percent total turnout in 2004.
I’m sure apathy had something to do with it. Some people are probably not pleased with the war. Many evangelicals are to the point now they won’t vote for the less of two evils. They are tired of plugging their nose and some folks stay away for that reason.
That is why in 2006, I would guess the number of evangelical Christians that did not vote is close to 10-11 million because they were not happy with the choices and primarily what the Republican Party was doing in 2006.
When the Republicans lost control of both houses in Congress in 2006, many conservatives, Republicans, and evangelicals stayed home out of frustration.
CP: In your opinion, what are these evangelicals looking for? In other words, what do candidates have to do to gain the support of this important voting constituency? Continue >>
