Theres an interesting passage

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There’s an interesting passage in the analysis portion of the new Zogby poll. It says …

Kerry leads among all age groups except 30-49 year olds, where the two candidates are pretty much tied. Catholics give Kerry a 50%-37% edge – numbers more similar to Clinton’s leads in 1992 and 1996 than Al Gore’s 51% to 46% margin in 2000. Protestants are for Bush (57% to 33%), especially on the strength of the President’s 68% to 20% margin among Born Again Protestants.

Meanwhile, the last major sounding of Hispanic <$Ad$>voters, done by the Post, Univision, and Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, puts Kerry over Bush by a 60% to 30% margin.

Jewish voters, though probably only electorally significant in one swing state this year, remain as Democratic as they were four years ago (75% to 22% for Kerry), despite much more than the usual degree of pandering from the White House, according to this poll just out from the National Jewish Democratic Council.

And though it’s probably not too much of a surprise that President Bush isn’t doing all that well among Muslim voters, let’s note for the record that this poll from June has the president clocking in at a rather anemic 3% support among voters who say there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger.

Now, many times I’ve noted the unlovely tendency many political commentators have of claiming that Democrats are ‘dependent’ on the black vote or that absent black votes the Democrats would be a permanent minority party. And far be it from me to make the same disreputable charge in reverse.

But if you look at these numbers you can see pretty clearly that the weight of the GOP comes heavily from white voters and particularly white evangelical voters. Despite all the terrible buffeting the country has gone through in the last few years, the thesis of Chris Caldwell’s masterful 1998 essay, ‘The Southern Captivity of the GOP’ is well worth revisiting.

(Unfortunately, the Atlantic Monthly has chosen not to make it available to the public on its website. If someone can point me to a site that has reprinted the piece, using some sort of public interest exception to the IP laws, I’d be much obliged.)

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