Over at MyDD, Todd Beeton surmises that the way to understand the Obama campaign is not in terms of lining up supporters ideologically (i.e. capturing the middle) but demographically (i.e. the young, the black, and the female). This makes sense to me. But what of the religious divide? As this blog has repeatedly emphasized, the less religiously observant consistently favor Obama; the more observant, McCain.
Young people are less observant than the old, but African Americans and women are more observant, respectively, than whites and men. Without benefit of regression analysis, I’d say that in the presidential race, the God gap intensifies the age gap, somewhat suppresses the gender gap, and has little effect on the race gap (more and less observant African Americans being equally supportive of Obama). Or, conversely, the God gap is intensified by the age gap, and weakened by the gender and race gaps. As you like.
Update: For the latest example of the religious divide, there’s SUSA’s North Carolina poll.