The "Secular Vote" in the 2006 Ohio Senate Race

Right after the 2004 presidential election there were a lot of articles on how the Democratic Party was in trouble with members of the religious right and how that trouble led to Bush's re-election. For a long time this theme dominated the media. Very little attention was given to the other side of the equation and that is whether Republicans were in trouble with, for want of a better term, the secular left.

With the 2006 election cycle, however, some commentators began to pay attention to that side of the equation. John Green, director of the Bliss Center for Applied Politics at the University of Akron, was quoted in an article pointing out that Ohioans who were not regular church goers were organizing politically at the same rate as the religious right. Because of Green's comments, the following article at Huffington Post caught our eye: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-scher/the-conservatives-secul_b_42359.html In the article Bill Scher argues that conservatives have problems with the secular voters that are bigger than the problems liberals have with the religious voters.

Based on that column, we examined the results of the CNN exit poll for Ohio's Senate race in 2006. That examination showed some interesting results.

According to the exit poll, 16% of Ohio voters surveyed attended church more than once a week. Among that group DeWine beat Brown by 62% to 38%. The same poll showed 30% attending weekly and among that group DeWine beat Brown by the much narrower margin of 52% to 48%. Respondents who only attended church once a month went for Brown by a margin of 59 to 48% and they accounted for 13% of the respondents. Respondents who attended church a few times a year accounted for 27% of the respondents and Brown beat DeWine by 69% to 31%. Respondents who never attended church accounted for 13% of the respondents and they went for Brown by a whopping 74% to 26%.

The survey is interesting for several reasons. First of all, it shows that respondents who attend church once a month or less accounted for 53% of the respondents. Second, only among the voters who attended church more than once a week did DeWine have a significant lead over Brown of 24%. They accounted for 16% of the respondents. Brown, however, significantly exceed that margin with those respondents who never attended church when he beat DeWine by 48% and they accounted for 13% of the respondents. Third while the biggest group, those attending church once a week did go for DeWine by 4%, the second biggest group, those attending church only a few times a year went for Brown by 38% of the vote. Brown was able to decisively beat DeWine among voters who have no or little church attendance while staying close to DeWine among those voters who attend church weekly.

A lot of this is being missed by the mainstream media. Most media commentators would not find anything "new" in secular voters voting for Democrats. They probably believe that such voting has been taking place for years. Such a belief is probably correct. What is new, however, may be that such voters are now overwhelmingly voting for Democrats.
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You can view the entire CNN exit poll results for the Brown-DeWine race by clicking on this entry's title.