God’s Country–Notes on Anderson Cooper’s 360

Tonight’s Anderson Cooper’s 360 did a decent overview of the faith in politics issues. Unfortunately, there was no real depth on any of the candidates or the specific salient faith public policy issues. Hopefully, the other segments in the series later in the week will address these issues. Tomorrow Anderson covers church/state separation and God in the public square.

Notes Summary:

Three Divisions of the God Vote

• • Northeast-Catholics
  • Southeast-Evangelicals
  • Midwest-Mixed
  • West Coast-Non-christians & evangelicals

  The Key Questions Are: Which Christians? And where?

  Public belives Bush mentions religion

  • Mit Romney & Obama are the leaders in perception of Faithfulness
  • Hillary & Guliani are on the bottom in peception of Faithfulness
  • Ironically Hillary & Guiliani are ahead of the pools & with religious voters

  Mara Vanderslice-Democratic Evangelical Strategist ie. Heath Schuler campaign

• Evangelical protestants
• Mainline protestants
• Catholics

Geographical Breakdown

• Too Often 24%
• Right Amount 52%
• Not often enough 14%

Authenticity? Does their life live up to the rhetoric?

The Polls