Obama Breaks Evangelicals' Grip on Politics

Listen to too many campaign reporters, and you might forget that there are religious voters out there other than white evangelicals. But, writes Lisa Miller in Newsweek, Barack Obama built a coalition of religious voters by improving Democratic performance with virtually everyone else. “Indeed, it includes almost every committed person of faith except those whose church culture insists on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

A Pew survey showed that 44% of Americans who regularly attend services voted for Obama, up 9 points from Kerry's showing. "It's very cool that the story is not white evangelicals again," said the leader of a left-leaning evangelical group. Obama got 79% of nonwhite religious voters, 82% of Jews, and 46% of Catholics. Only 23% of white evangelicals voted for him, 3 points below Kerry's mark. (More Election 2008 stories.)