Zogby Exit Polls Focus on Dems who are Evangelicals

Last week we posted an entry that talked about the fact that most exit polls don't ask Democratic voters if they are evangelicals. This week we find out that the Zogby polling group did just that in Missouri and Tennessee during last week's primaries. According to a Yahoo News story on the exit polls, they were commissioned by a organization called Faith in Public Life. Faith in Public Life is described as a non-partisan resource center.

The results are interesting. This is a quote from the Yahoo article:

In Missouri, the polls showed 34 percent of all white evangelicals who voted took part in the Democratic primary versus 66 percent in the Republican primary.

Evangelicals made up 19 percent of all Democratic voters in Missouri and supported Clinton over Obama by 54 percent to 37 percent, closely mirroring the vote among all whites.

In Tennessee, the polls indicated 32 percent of primary voters who fit this profile were Democratic and accounted for 29 percent of the party's vote there.

It would be interesting to see what such exit polls would show for Ohio. One problem with the media is that very few reporters actually know white evangelicals. Since they don't know from personal experience any evangelical voters who are Democratic, it is easy for them to conclude that all such voters are Republicans.

This, of course, is not true. Indeed in 2004, according to the 2004 CNN exit poll, 21% of white evangelicals voted for John Kerry and they made up 23% of the electorate. Raising that percentage to 30% would have made a big impact on the 2004 election since Bush lost those voters who were not white, evangelicals by a 56% to 43% margin.

Hopefully, Zogby will continue such exit polls and publication of their results will begin to change the perceptions of the media.