Survey finds evangelicals & religiously unaffiliated as potential swing votes in election

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Nearly one in five evangelicals and Catholics are undecided about which presidential candidate to support, according to a recent survey.

In addition, fewer Protestants and Catholics identify themselves as Republicans than did four years ago, according to Calvin College’s Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics in Grand Rapids, Mich., which commissioned the survey.

Protestants—along with Hispanic Catholics and religiously unaffiliated Americans—could be the crucial “swing vote in the electorate,” said Kevin den Dulk, a political scientist at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich.

One of the new influential groups are voters who classify themselves as “unaffiliated”—people who identify as secular, agnostic or do not assign themselves to any religious category. They comprise more than 16 percent of all Americans and are traditionally young and male.

Evangelical Protestants make up more than one-quarter of all Americans and still remain overwhelming Republican. But the report showed a fragmentation among U.S. evangelicals, with younger members possibly peeling away from traditional Republican values in favor of other issues, including environmental protection.

With the unstable economy and rising gas prices, the economy and the war in Iraq will trump social causes as major campaign issues for 2008, the survey found.

At the same time, increasing immigration continues to contribute to “a growing religious pluralism,” especially among Latinos, according to the survey.