A bad sign for Democrats

The Democrats and religious voters. By Amy Sullivan - Slate Magazine

Just recently I posted about how the Catholic vote for Bush in 2004 was higher than I expected. (Well, the white Catholic vote, anyway.)

Further along these lines is the above interesting article on how, despite attempts by the Democrats to paint a friendlier image to the religious, they have lost substantial ground in this over the last couple of years:

The Pew Research Center's annual poll on religion and politics, released last week, shows that while 85 percent of voters say religion is important to them, only 26 percent of Americans think the Democratic Party is "friendly" to religion. That's down from 40 percent in the summer of 2004 and 42 percent the year before that—in other words, a 16-point plunge over three years. The decline is especially troubling because it cuts across the political and religious spectra, encompassing liberals and conservatives, white and black evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

That seems a very bad sign indeed for the Democrats. Isn't it odd how, despite all the liberal fights in churches getting so much publicity, there still don't seem to be many (or enough) liberal churchgoers who can sway these figures more in favour of the Dems.