Poll Finds Overwhelming Evangelical Support for Bush
President Bush thus far has garnered more support from
evangelicals than he did in the 2000 election, according
to a new poll.
In fact, California-based Christian pollster George Barna
found that 86 percent of evangelical Christians plan to
vote for Bush this fall, Baptist Press reported.
In a survey taken the last week of May, a mere 8 percent
of evangelicals said they will vote for Democratic
presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.
Better than 60 percent of evangelicals consider themselves
Republicans, and 75 percent say they are conservative.
Eighty-four percent of them are registered to vote, and 89
percent of them give Bush favorable ratings.
By a whopping 33 percent margin, meanwhile,
non-evangelicals say they support Kerry, while confessed
agnostics and atheists favor Kerry by a 53-35 percent
margin.
Barna's definition of "evangelical" is different than that
of most other pollsters. He considers them to be people
who have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ and
who believe in the traditional tenets of the orthodox
faith -- such things as the reality of Heaven and hell,
the accuracy of the Scriptures, and salvation by grace.
Barna sees the group constituting only 7 percent of the
population, while other pollsters identify the evangelical
community as much larger, sometimes by defining them
merely as doctrinally conservative Christians.