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![]() A quarter of President Barack Obama's supporters were religiously unaffiliated, the Public Religion Research Institute says.
November 15th, 2012
02:24 PM ET
Survey: Religiously unaffiliated, minority Christians propelled Obama’s victoryBy Dan Merica, CNN Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama’s victory relied largely on two dramatically different religious coalitions - minority Christians and those with no religion – according to a survey released Thursday. “This presidential election is the last in which a white Christian strategy will be considered a plausible path to victory,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, which conducted the survey. “The American religious and ethnic landscape is becoming increasingly diverse, and any campaigns relying on outdated maps are destined to lose their way.” One-in-four Obama voters were religiously unaffiliated, the second-largest “religious” demographic in the president’s coalition, according to the study (PDF). Minority Christians - consisting of black, Asian, Hispanic and mixed-race Americans – made up 31% of Obama’s coalition, the largest religious group. Among major religious demographics, Obama struggled most with white Christians, including Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelical Protestants. When these three groups were added up, they accounted for just 35% of Obama’s religious coalition. In comparison, Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s coalition was overwhelmingly white and Christian, with 79% of Romney voters identifying as such. The Public Religion Research Institute numbers flesh out exit polls released after Election Day. According to those numbers, 70% of the religiously unaffiliated supported Obama, compared with 26% who backed Romney. Ninety-five percent of black Protestants voted for Obama, according to the exit polls, while 75% of Hispanic Catholics supported the president. Romney, according to the exit polls, overwhelmingly won white evangelical Christians (79% voted for him) and white Catholics (59% voted for him). The rise of the religiously unaffiliated has been a major recent trend. A survey by Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released this year found that the fastest-growing "religious" group in America is made up of people with no religion at all. According to the survey, 20% of adult Americans have no religious affiliation. At an event announcing the Pew results, senior research adviser John Green said the growing political power of the unaffiliated within the Democratic Party could become similar to the power the religious right acquired in the GOP in the 1980s. The 2012 election results have some political experts questioning whether the religious right’s influence is fading. The Rev. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, tweeted after the election that the results show “we are witnessing a fundamental moral realignment of the country.” Conservative evangelist Franklin Graham, CEO of Samaritan’s Purse and son of the Rev. Billy Graham, told CNN that while he doesn’t believe the movement is fading, “there is a lot of work we need to do.” “I just think there are a lot of conservative Christians who did not vote for whatever reason,” Franklin Graham said. Like Graham, Jones said the legalization of same-sex marriage by ballot initiative in three states last week shows that America is changing. “For the first time tonight, same-sex marriage has been passed by popular vote in Maine and Maryland,” Jones said last week. “The historic nature of these results are hard to overstate. Given the strong support of younger Americans for same-sex marriage, it is unlikely this issue will reappear as a major national wedge issue.” The results of the Public Religion Research Institute survey were based on 1,410 telephone interviews in both Spanish and English conducted between November 7 and Sunday. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. - CNN’s Dan Gilgoff contributed to this report.
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Tom is gay
I'm sure you wish that were true, D!ckie. You might have a shot at me then.
A lot of atheist have STD's cause they have no morals. They live like animals.
How stupid ARE you? I mean, really? How do you even remember to breathe?
Richard is in no danger of getting STD's since no one would be interested in having S with him.
Not only that, but he is sub-animal and clearly has no balls.
Atheist believed that black people were the missing link! Tell me that's not racist, they are worse then the morons I mean Mormons
All stupid atheist should go walk in front of a moving bus
All D!cks who can't figure out how to write should take a long walk off a short pier. Here's a clue, dumbfvck: it's ATHEISTS.
Aww, how Christian of you. All wimpy Christards named Richard should gag on some Psalms. Still upset that everyone found this year that Jesbub had a boyfriend?
White males over 50 longer control the national political apparatus.
White fundamentalist evangelical Christians have lost power.
You are not going to get that toothpaste back in the tube.
If white fundamentalist evangelical Christians do not curb their lust for political power they will push more modrates out of that tube and into the Democrat caucus
My message to all the religious anti abortionists: abortion is way less of a sin than eating a chicken, cow, or fish. Thou shall not kill. If you claim to believe your bible, actually read it and follow it. For you literal bible believers, thou shalt not kill does not say thou shalt not kill only humans and eat them it says "Thou shalt not kill" period. None of you have any business quoting the bible against abortion when you are responsible for the killing and eating of gods creatures.
From the Bible:
Kill a fetus by a caused miscarriage: pay a FINE to the FATHER
Kill or injure a PERSON: "an eye for an eye".
I'm pretty sure its ok in the Bible to kill and eat animals. People are omnivores. Get use to it.
Read Leviticus. There's a whole host of dietary rules there. Or do the rational thing and don't base your entire life on the ramblings of superst.itious goat molesters who lived 3,000 years ago.
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You are all fu-cking as-shole c-unts I am the queen
Poor troll. You must be depressed.
If that's a troll they are being fastidious in their impersonation.
What's the matter, RL? Suffering from feeling of inadequacy and inferiority?
How sad that such feelings are justified by your inadequacy and inferiority.
Forgot to add, RL: "they" refers to more than one person. The noun you want is "he," you stupid tw@t.
When the gender is unknown, 'they' has to be used as pronoun. So go fudge yourself Tom you pathetic w.hore.
Wrong, sh!twit. As always.
Ok c.unt, please tell me. If the gender is unknown, what other pronoun is to be used?
He/she, you stupid fvck. Either that, or re-phrase the statement. Of course, you're too thick to figure out how to do that, aren't you?
examples of pronouns: MICHAEL JORDAN, DEION SANDERS,JIM THORPE
Jesus, RL, are you REALLY that stupid? Or is this just a troll using your moniker? Anyone with a clue as to how to write would know that "they" and "their" are not correct if the subject is singular. What a witless fvcktard.
Fred, those are not pronouns. No wonder you're a laughingstock.
Nope, 'they' is perfectly acceptable. Look up any dictionary more up to date than Johnson's first edition. Now go f.uck yourself you pathetic, liberal, d.ouchebag w.hore.
Nope. It's only "acceptable" to idiots like you who grew up in Outer Bumfvck.
Here's two links to online dictionaries. Both acknowledge the usage problem yet both also acknowledge that it is perfectly acceptable to use.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/they
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/they
Tom Tom
They are all Pro and all are nouns.
Even I, the all-powerful OZ, would dare not challenge Tom Tom regarding correct use of the English language.
RL, I don't give a ripe sh!t what your sources say. It is not correct to use "they" or "their" when the subject is singular. Argue it all you want, you moron. You'll still be wrong.
You don't care what reputable English language experts say? So what, some d.ike c.unt who stays in her bedroom blogging all day is a more capable expert? I doubt it.
@Rational Libertarian & Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son –
Wow! Abundant hostility.
RL – TTPS is correct that use of a singular personal pronoun (he or she) in your sentence is proper; however, use of plural personal pronouns in informal writing has become acceptable (you're both on solid ground). The best solution would be to simply reword the sentence to avoid the problem – perhaps something like, "If it is a troll, it's a fastidious impersonation."
Cheers to you both.
Nope, I shall not stand down. Tom is easily the worst non religious person on these blogs and I will not give in to her. It's the fact that she brings me down to her level which annoys me the most. I don't really enjoy all this unnecessary name calling, but I can't help it when Tom's involved.
That's because you're a jit-bag, RL.
More misleading one sided reporting.. the first paragraph mentions those with no religion. But then says One-in-four Obama voters were religiously unaffiliated. That is not the same thing. Deists, which several of our founding fathers were, are not atheists but still fall in that category. They believe in God but not churches or organized religion and generally will not pick from the list of organized religions when asked, they just say other.
Perhaps you should have followed the link to the study instead of assuming that the story wasn't accurate. The possible groups included both "unaffilated" AND "Non-Christian Religious". The latter would likely be the choice of deists.
Christians need to stop buttfvcking our young children.
Prayer changes things .
Hey fool! How many times are you going to paste the same thing on this article. Go away clown!!
It is true
Ask Republicans how well that worked in the elections.
Tom Tom sucks.
You wish.
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Grow up.
This is as mature as the dolt will ever be.
i voted for Obama and I'm an atheist. Eventually everyone will wise up and will be an atheist. Wasn't all that long ago when people were believing in Zeus and other gods and yet we laugh at the idea now. No differenece. With the age of technology and information at our fingertips religion will be dead as it should be. Sad that the people screaming about religion never read their own book. If they did read their bible they would see the hate and bigotry it actually shows but you can't this rational discussion with people. They will just plug their eyes with their fingers and yell louder.
We have more idiots in the world than smart people.
atheism is a belief without proof, just as are the beliefs of organized religion. If you are going to quote science and facts as a reason to be atheist you are as delusion as everyone else. If you choose to believe there is no God that if your right, but the only stand that can be argued with science and logic is to be agnostic.
I don't see muslims wising up anytime soon. I do think there is hope for christians though
Al.. an atheist simply does not believe in any god as no proof of its existence is ever been presented. Science is so far the best method humans have invented to understand their world. Science is not anti god it is not anti anything. It is self correcting ., which religion is not and has such as much of what the religions claim is not shown to be true.
@al, "atheism is a belief without proof"
That's one definition of atheism but not the only one. I'm an atheist because I don't believe in something, not because I do. Not believing in something doesn't require proof. Do you believe in a magical bunny that farts rainbows? Probably not. Do you then need proof to not believe?
@al
Agnostic and atheist are answers to two completely different questions, and are not mutually exclusive.
Al, that is like saying that the only correct scientific position on the Easter bunny is to acknowledge that it just may exist. Laughable.
The topic is about who propelled BO to the White (Blood Red) House. And the answer is once again, the Immoral/Stupid Majority did just like in 2008:->>>>
To wit:
Only for the new members of this blog–>>>>
As noted many times before the election:
Why the Christian Right no longer matters in presidential elections:
Once again, all the conservative votes in the country "ain't" going to help a "pro-life" presidential candidate, i.e Mitt Romney, in 2012 as the "Immoral Majority" rules the country and will be doing so for awhile. The "Immoral Majority" you ask?
The fastest growing USA voting bloc: In 2008, the 70+ million "Roe vs. Wade mothers and fathers" of aborted womb-babies" whose ranks grow by two million per year i.e. 78+ million "IM" voters in 2012.
2008 Presidential popular vote results:
69,456,897 for pro-abortion/choice BO, 59,934,814 for "pro-life" JM.
And the irony:
And all because many women fail to take the Pill once a day or men fail to use a condom even though in most cases these men have them in their pockets. (maybe they should be called the "Stupid Majority"?)
The failures of the widely used birth "control" methods i.e. the Pill and male condom have led to the large rate of abortions ( one million/yr) and S-TDs (19 million/yr) in the USA. Men and women must either recognize their responsibilities by using the Pill or condoms properly and/or use other safer birth control methods in order to reduce the epidemics of abortion and S-TDs.
i.e. IF THE PILL AND MALE CONDOMS WERE USED PROPERLY, ABORTION WOULD NOT BE AN ISSUE AND OBAMA WOULD NOT BE PRESIDENT.
Nonsense. None of the exit polls showed abortion to be a deciding factor.
Reality should change his moniker to "Delusion."
Keeping "in tune" with BO and Axelrod's 24/7 ads supporting choice/abortion two weeks before the election.
politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/.../exit-polls-abortion-as-an-election-iss...
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/06/exit-polls-abortion-as-an-election-issue/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_politicalticker+%28Blog%3A+Political+Ticker%29
"In some of the other swing states where voters were asked about abortion, 56% of Ohio's voters told exit pollsters abortion should be legal all or most of the time while 39% say it should be illegal.
Sixty-three percent of Virginia's voters say abortion should be legal all or most of the time while 33% say it should be illegal.
The split is even more lopsided in New Hampshire where 71% say abortion should be legal all or most of the time and 27% say it should be illegal."
they were speaking of their sole, filthy desire, not truth absolute Allah, way of Is'lamb magi gentile's, filthy trickster slave Christians to spew their mor mon ism, absurdity, whom ever they do not like. Their Motto is nothing else but do what ever works for you, while calling GAWD's name repeatedly to hide, fool humanity. Deep down, in belly of Satan Allah, they do not believe in truth absolute GAWD, not GOD or DOG ism of fake prophets, ignorant. Did I make my self clear goon Dan?
Congrats to the DESTRUCTION PARTY. After the election over 35,000 were laid off and they keep counting. Also the stock market plunged 400 points.
Facts do not lie: Make up your own mind. Just Google it. CNN will not let me post links.
You can't prove that those 35000 jobs were because of the election.
And the stock market is going down because of the fiscal cliff, NOT the election.
If the repubs would actually come to the table and compromise, the stock market would go right back up.
niknak@
Its common sense. Approximately quoting Reagan, "government is not the solution its the problem". You cant taz and overregulate your way out of a recession. Too bad so many people bought this class warfare from Prez. Hussain
tax not taz
It's always amusing when right-wingers invoke the ghost of Reagan – who, if he were alive today, espousing the same ideals, and enacting the same policies, would be roundly demonized as a RINO, and targeted by the Tea Party for defeat.
• The moderators of this blog have set up a "secret" forbidden word filter which unfortunately not only will delete or put your comment in the dreaded "waiting for moderation" category but also will do the same to words having fragments of these words. For example, "t-it" is in the set but the filter will also pick up words like Hitt-ite, t-itle, beati-tude, practi-tioner and const-tution. Then there are words like "an-al" thereby flagging words like an-alysis and "c-um" flagging acc-umulate or doc-ument. And there is also "r-a-pe", “a-pe” and “gra-pe”, "s-ex", and "hom-ose-xual". You would think that the moderators would have corrected this by now considering the number of times this has been commented on but they have not. To be safe, I typically add hyphens in any word that said filter might judge "of-fensive".
• Make sure the web address does not have any forbidden word or fragment.
Sum Dude routinely updates the list of forbidden words/fragments.
Two of the most filtered words are those containing the fragments "t-it" and "c-um". To quickly check your comments for these fragments, click on "Edit" on the Tool Bar and then "Find" on the menu. Add a fragment (without hyphens) one at a time in the "Find" slot and the offending fragment will be highlighted in your comments before you hit the Post button. Hyphenate the fragment(s) and then hit Post. And remember more than one full web address will also gain a "Waiting for Moderation".
Zeb’s alphabetical listing
o “bad letter combinations / words to avoid if you want to get past the CNN "awaiting moderation" filter:
Many, if not most, are buried within other words, so use your imagination.
You can use dashes, spaces, or other characters to modify the "offending" letter combinations.
--–
ar-se.....as in Car-se, etc.
ba-stard
co-ck.....as in co-ckatiel, co-ckatrice, co-ckleshell, co-ckles, lubco-ck, etc.
co-on.....as in rac-oon, coc-oon, etc.
cu-m......as in doc-ument, accu-mulate, circu-mnavigate, circu-mstances, cu-mbersome, cuc-umber, etc.
cu-nt.....as in Scu-ntthorpe, a city in the UK famous for having problems with filters...!
do-uche
ef-fing...as in ef-fing filter
ft-w......as in soft-ware, delft-ware, swift-water, etc.
fu-ck......!
ho-mo.....as in ho-mo sapiens or ho-mose-xual, ho-mogenous, etc.
ho-rny....as in tho-rny, etc.
jacka-ss...yet "ass" is allowed by itself.....
ja-p......as in j-apanese, ja-pan, j-ape, etc.
ji-sm
koo-ch....as in koo-chie koo..!
nip-ple
pi-s......as in pi-stol, lapi-s, pi-ssed, therapi-st, etc.
pr-ick....as in pri-ckling, pri-ckles, etc.
ra-pe.....as in scra-pe, tra-peze, gr-ape, thera-peutic, sara-pe, etc.
se-x......as in Ess-ex, s-exual, etc.
sh-@t.....but shat is okay – don't use the @ symbol there.
sh-it
sl-ut
sn-atch
sp-ic.....as in disp-icable, hosp-ice, consp-icuous, susp-icious, sp-icule, sp-ice, etc.
ti-t......as in const-itution, att-itude, ent-ities, alt-itude, beat-itude, etc.
tw-at.....as in wristw-atch, nightw-atchman, etc.
va-g......as in extrava-gant, va-gina, va-grant, va-gue, sava-ge, etc.
who-re....as in who're you kidding / don't forget to put in that apostrophe!
wt-f....also!!!!!!!
–
There are more, some of them considered "racist", so do not assume that this list is complete.
-–
Allowed words / not blocked at all:
anal
anus
ass
boob
crap
damn
execute
hell
kill
masturbation
murder
penis
pubic
raping (ra-pe is not ok)
shat (sh-@t is not ok)
sphincter
testes
testicles
–
The CNN / WordPress filter also filters your EMAIL address and NAME as well – so you might want to check those.
How many tea baggers does it take to lose and election?
Sal,
Since you like facts, here are a couple:
From the first to the last day of Bush, the stock market ended with a LOSS of 22%.
From the first to the current day of Obama, the stock market is UP around 50%
Ooops.
under bush: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bear_market_of_2007%E2%80%932009
bush job loss: http://www.politifact.com/new-hampshire/statements/2012/jun/01/joe-biden/joe-biden-says-35-million-jobs-lost-during-bush-ad/
Actually, Sandy the storm is attributed to most of the added unemployment. Then there are some Republican sore losers that would hurt their employees and their families just so they could falsely blame Obama. The Denny's 40-franchise owner who said he would have to raise prices by 5% to pay for the cost of providing health care to employees didn't shake anyone up. Most people would be happy to pay 5% more to help millions more uninsured people get health care.
I'll bet if you check his last few price increases, they were more than that. I have no sympathy for anyone who considers it a negative to have employees cost him a little more for health care. Those are the 2 percenters with the "Let 'em die" crowd. Fortunately, they are in the minority.
Really? You're saying that the Superstorm Sandy was caused by 'added unemployment," Danno? Because that's what you said in your post.
Moron.
what
Franklin Graham told them on t.v, that he thought Newt Gingritch was a Christian, even though Newt cheated on his first wife, cheated on his second wife, and is now married for the third time. Franklin Graham thinks that President Obama is not a Christian, even though he is still with his first wife, has never been known to cheat on her, goes to Church with his wife and two daughters, has a devotional each morning with the White House paster, and tries in every way, to help the average American.
I don't think I'm going to listen to Franklin Graham. Like father, like son? HARDLY.
they were speaking of their hindu soul, filthy desire, not truth absolute, way of hindu magi gentile's, filthy trickster slave Christians to spew their hinduism, absurdity, whom ever they do not like. Their Motto is nothing else but do what ever works for you, while calling God's name repeatedly to hind, fool humanity. Deep down they do not believe in truth absolute GOD.
have to 'fess
Im not a churchgoing xtian. Making these caricature posts posing as one to defame them. I should probably stop. You wont see me here from now on.
So, any position you have seen me take, probably not a position of conservatives or catholics or anyone I purport to be.
Peace
Thanks to all those who civilly debated my persona, YOU are really saints.
Is your name really Jim?