Churchgoers Are Still Republicans
Thirty years ago, how often you went to church didn't mark you as a Democrat or a Republican. Evangelicals didn't have a party.

As the parties sorted according to lifestyle instead of class, weekly churchgoers and evangelicals became reliably Republican voters in presidential races. There's no evidence this is changing.

Religious people tended Republican when the Democrat Party adopted positions that completely disregarded thousands of years of church teaching and worked to marginalize the role of religion in society. If the Democratic Party isn't changing those positions, why would they expect religious believers to change their affiliation?

Of course, you could have a more balanced church membership if political liberals attended church more. That sort of change is completely within their hands to make.

Women Voting Democratic
In the 1970s, more women voted Republican than men. Over the past 30 years, they have increasingly voted Democratic. Again, there was a spate of stories about a reversal in this arrangement, but by late September Gallup had women supporting Obama 52 percent to 39 percent.

That's because most of the nation's felons are males concentrated in neighborhoods that vote overwhelmingly Democrat. In those Democratic-voting neighborhoods, the _legal_ voters are overwhelmingly female.

If you look at _normal_ women -- women who are married, with children -- I think the Democrat/Republican split will be pretty even.

Rural Is Still Republican
Rural voters have been moving toward the Republican Party since the '70s. That trend continues, too.

Well, rural people tend to be old-fashioned. When the Democrat Party starts showing respect for old-fashioned values and social mores, they'll get more rural votes. Words are good, but actions count more. If President Obama wisely refrains from taking on the N.R.A. (Clinton's mistake), the credibility of Democratic Party candidates will increase.

"If you look at _normal_ women -- women who are married, with children -- I think the Democrat/Republican split will be pretty even."

I suspect that women may tend Democratic because they have a tendancy to link moronic ideas about women and their place in society - like the idea that a woman needs to be a wife and mother to be "normal," with an outwardly "Republican" pseudo-conservative movement that seems to be deliberately attempting to deligitimize anyone who doesn't conform to a moral code that was formulated by a stone-age culture in a desert half a world away - back when such things as "others should be friends, not property" was regarded as a one-way ticket to the demise of one's tribe.

Republicans do themselves few favors by not quickly denouncing such talk - allowing, in effect, random blow-hards to be their public face. As much as the popular stereotype of Democrats is that they believe in rule by an elite class of ineffectual, effete snobs, there is an equally pervasive (and incorrect) stereotype of Republicans longing for rule by the morally (and for some, racially) superior, and only allowing those who meet their self-serving "standards" to be counted as worthy citizens.

fsilber wrote: "Religious people tended Republican when the Democrat Party adopted positions that completely disregarded thousands of years of church teaching and worked to marginalize the role of religion in society."

Nonsense. Fundamentalists trended Republican when their churches ignored thousands of years of religious teaching and opted for multi level marketing. This meshed well with RepubliCON economic policies - a Ponzi scheme that Americans are now seeing the effect.

People espousing true religious charity never left the Democrats because their beliefs mirrored that party's care for the poor and disadvantaged.

Fundamentalists are not interested in those who aren't members except as an opportunity to attract a new converts. Its a club they belong to and those who aren't members don't count.

me, earlier: "If you look at _normal_ women -- women who are married, with children -- I think the Democrat/Republican split will be pretty even."

Lyger:

I suspect that women may tend Democratic because they have a tendancy to link moronic ideas about women and their place in society - like the idea that a woman needs to be a wife and mother to be "normal,"

Unless you have in mind a new kind of society in which a few women will have a dozen children to make up for the majority having none, either it will remain normal for a woman to be a mother, or that society will soon evaporate (and be replaced by another with quite different characteristics).

Accepting that it's normal for a woman to be a mother, then it must be equally normal for her to be a wife -- unless you want to claim that bastardy should become the new standard despite the poverty and social ill the practice generates.

That's not to say it's _bad_ for a _few_ women to be unconventional and not have children. But I'm using the term "normal" in its statistical sense, not as the word is used in medicine.

I'll buy that. But I think that "conventional" is a more value-neutral term than "normal." Call someone "abnormal," and they get their hackles up. "Unconventional" isn't seen as being either as negative or as judgemental.