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Pope Benedict Expresses Prayers for Obama in Private Note
News — ... Rev. Federico Lombardi, spokesman for the pope. According to CNN's exit polls , Obama won Catholic voters in the presidential election, taking 54 percent to Republican John McCain's 45 percent. - Michael O'Brien

A Great Day For Choice
Winds of Change.NET — ... was elected President of the United States of America. According to CNN polling (link), he was supported even by 54% of the Catholic vote. ...

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday!
Open Left - Front Page — ... Obama won everyone (58% of the electorate) who is not a white Protestant 67%-31%, and everyone (74% of the electorate) who is not a white evangelical / born-again 62%-36% (see exit polls). I intend to bring that up every time a pundit believes it is insightful to say that Democrats would lose every election were it not for African-Americans. Were it not for white Protestants, the Republican Party would functionally cease to exist. ...

Holy Joe Lieberman Was Resurrected After Three Days
Hit & Run — ... McCain court a few sought-after groups of voters. First, Jewish voters who might have a problem with a candidate who wanted to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, oh yeah, was named "Barack Hussein Obama." Second, independents. Third, voters in Lieberman's own state of Connecticut, a swing state as recently as 1992, and New Hampshire, a swing state every year since then. How'd it go? Jewish voters: John Kerry won them, 74-25 percent. Obama won them by more, 78-21. Independents: Kerry won them, 49-48 percent. Obama won ...

Number of Non-Christians Continues To Increase
Open Left - Front Page — ... An 11% drop in Christian self-identification has major political implications. In 2008, self-identified non-Christians voted for Barack Obama by a massive, 75%-23% margin. If, in another 18 years, there is a further 11% shift away from Christian self-identification, according to current voting patterns it would increase the Democratic margin of another 5-6%. ...

Religious Identification Survey, Follow-up
Open Left - Front Page — ... According to current voting patterns, where non-Christians broke for President Obama by a 75%-23% margin, it also indicates a national shift of about 1.5% in favor of Democrats by the time of the 2020 elections. Add that 1.5% to ...

The New Political Demography
Open Left - Front Page — ... Given that non-whites broke 79%-18% for Obama, or more than 4-1, for this group to make up 80% of the population growth in America is a doomsday scenario for Republicans. Considering that non-Christians "only" went 73%-25% for Obama, or just under 3-1, having non-Christians replaced as the dominant growth demographic in America is actually bad news for Republicans. That's kind of mind-blowing. ...

VIDEO: Cantor: 'Big place' for Jews in the GOP
News — ... House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) took the unusual move of speaking publicly about his role as the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives Sunday, saying there's room for Jews in the GOP. "There's no secret that the majority of the American Jewish community is Democrat," Cantor said during a personal profile Sunday morning on CBS. "But I believe there is a big place for American Jews in the Republican Party." According to CNN's exit poll of the 2008 presidential election , 78 percent of Jewish Americans supported President Obama, while 21 percent supported ...

Remember when Obama had a "Jewish problem"?
Daily Kos — ... Given that Jewish voters voted Obama 78-21 in 2008, it should come as little surprise that Jewish Republicans are as rare as African American ones. ...

The Future of the Electorate: Religion
Open Left - Front Page — ... Since both surveys have age crosstabs, they make it possible to forecast future religious affiliation with reasonable accuracy. However, before we make such a forecast, since we are looking at the future of religious from an electoral perspective, it is necessary to sort the numerous religious affiliations into coherent units of partisan preference. The Pew survey allows us to do this, given their far more detailed demographic crosstabs. Looking at the Pew survey, and at exit polls, there are four clear partisan categories: ...

Jason Notte: How to Live Vicariously Through Britain's Blacklist
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... Pope apparently had no influence over. That's simply too far fetched. Meanwhile, Donohue and several other hoarse-voiced members of Mother Church have staged apoplectic protestsof Notre Dame, as that university prepares to give President Obama an honorary law degree and let him take the lectern for that university's commencement speech. Never mind that protests of pro-choice Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's commencement speech in 1992 were equally futile, Obama carried the Catholic vote in November or that American Catholics are skewing more ...

Midday open thread
Daily Kos — ... The latest wingnut logic is that since the Holocaust Museum shooter was an anti-Obama, anti-government neo-Nazi, that he was a liberal! It's that hilariously deranged Jonah Goldberg logic that since Hitler's party was the National Socialists, therefore they were socialists, which is just like liberals! Weird that Jewish voters voted Democratic by a 78-21 margin in 2008, huh? ...

Thinking about the Supreme Court and the Voting Rights Act
Betsy's Page — ... McCain had a special appeal for veterans and there are more veterans in those areas of the country, they might have voted based on that while some veterans might have voted for Kerry in 2004. As far as the differences between those regions and others in the 2008 election, Greenhouse is assuming that race was the determinative factor. However, a more salient difference might have been religion. Those regions have more evangelicals and more people who attend church weekly or more. And strength of religiosity was one of the strongest predictors of support for McCain. ...

Republican White Voter Strategy?
Open Left - Front Page — ... There is much to agree with here. This is especially the case if one narrows Edsall's formulation of "white voters" to "white Christian voters," given that white non-Christians vote for Democrats by 3-1 margins that are nearly identical to non-whites. ...

Democrats as a whole becoming more like the Progressive Caucus
Open Left - Front Page — What percentage of Democratic voters are one or more of the following? Self-identified not-"white non-Hispanic" (39%) Self-identified non-Christian (28%) Some form of vegetarian? (14%*) A union member (13%) Not self-identified heterosexual (7%) (* With 10% of the country following some form of vegetarian diet, this number is based on the assumption that vegetarians break Democratic 3-1, which is a margin very similar to the LGBT community, non-Christians, and not "white non-Hispanic." ...