Monday, April 19, 2004

On NPR just now, Cokie Roberts was noting that approximately two-thirds of regular churchgoers voted for George W. Bush in 2000, while approximately two-thirds of people who don't regularly go to church voted for Al Gore. Roberts and Bob Edwards then agreed that America is a big churchgoing nation.

Am I missing something here? If Group A is much bigger than Group B, and the two groups vote in exactly opposite ways, shouldn't Group A's candidate win in a landslide?

Maybe we're not as big a churchgoing nation as Cokie and Bob think. Or maybe people who don't go to church regularly (or at all) vote in greater numbers than regular churchgoers do. Either way, Cokie's notion that God-fearing red-staters' votes utterly negate those of us nasty secular humanists seems to be utterly without foundation.

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