Midterm Elections 2014: White Evangelicals Helped Tip The Scales For The GOP

White Evangelicals turned up at the polls in large numbers on Tuesday, playing a key role placing Congress in the hands of the Republican Party.

Evangelicals tend to be more enthusiastic than other groups about the midterm elections, according to polling data from Reuters/Ipsos. Election Day 2014 was no different, with exit polls showing that Protestants and other non-Catholic Christians made up about half of the electorate and tended to cast their votes in favor of the GOP by about 60 percent.

More specifically, 26 percent of voters self-identified as white evangelical or born-again Christian. Of that group, 78 percent voted for Republican candidates.

In highly contested races in the Southern states of Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, exit polling shows that white evangelicals showed up to vote in high percentages, according to Religion Dispatches.

“Conservative voters of faith were the largest constituency in the electorate in 2014,” Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, said in a statement. “Their share of the electorate exceeded that of the African-American vote, Hispanic vote, and union vote combined. Religious conservative voters and the issues they care about are here to stay. They will be equally vital in 2016. Politicians of both parties ignore this constituency at their peril.”

via Midterm Elections 2014: White Evangelicals Helped Tip The Scales For The GOP.