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The Evangelical Electoral Map (Updated)

Christianity Today November 5, 2008

Obama didn’t win a majority of evangelicals in any state. No surprise there. But there was some question about whether Obama’s support with evangelicals would draw one out of three evangelical voters (as Clinton did in 1992) or one out of four (as Kerry did in 2004). The answer is closer to the latter: Exit polls say 26 percent of American voters called themselves evangelical or born-again Christians, and of these, 74 percent voted for McCain, with 25 percent voting for Obama. (Another measure put the percentage of evangelicals at 23 percent, with 73 percent voting for McCain, 26 percent for Obama.)

But the evangelical vote varied significantly from state to state, from Illinois’ 19-point margin to Mississippi’s 81-point margin, from states with evangelical populations so small that they didn’t even register, to states where they are a majority of the electorate.

Here are the results, using CNN’s numbers.

View Larger Map

Not on the map: Alaska and Hawaii.

Alaska’s electorate was 25% evangelical/born-again, and evangelicals voted 80% for McCain, 17% for Obama.

Only 8% of those in Hawaii’s exit polls were evangelicals, and their votes are unavailable.

Update: I’ve moved this further up the page since it was falling rather far down and we’re about to fill the rest of the states in.

Also: Some folks seem confused. This isn’t the electoral college map. This is the evangelical vote map. Clicking on the states show what percentage of the state electorate was born again/evangelical, and how those evangelicals voted.

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