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As voters in Oklahoma and South Carolina prepare for presidential primaries on February 3, they're likely to hear more from Democrats about faith, God, and morality.

Pollsters and political analysts say that Al Gore might have won the Electoral College in 2000 if he had pursued the votes of "swing evangelicals" in West Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida. Early polls show that the November 2004 presidential reelection bid by President George W. Bush could be similarly close.

Democrats are worried that an increasingly religious public sees their party as opposing God and moral values. "I think we've made a mistake by not putting our values up front," Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) said. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) told The New York Times he is angry that "Republicans seem to suggest they have a monopoly on values in public life. They don't. We don't either, but we care about values, including faith-based values."

Republicans say Democrats are late in learning the importance of faith and morals. "Most evangelicals have been active in politics since the 1970s and are keen on distinguishing rhetoric from reality," said a senior Republican campaign adviser in Washington. "Values language has become a cliché itself, a high art in politics."

Despite some cordial overtures from Democratic presidential contenders Joe Lieberman and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Democrats "are generally in a fog" about relating to evangelicals, said Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Democrats' efforts to change their image have led to some awkward moments, even from veteran politicians familiar with church life. Campaigning in Marshalltown, Iowa, for instance, Gephardt, a Baptist, said that Jesus "was a Democrat, I think." Gephardt acknowledged "some reticence" about discussing religion during the campaign.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean has tangled himself into knots over how to reach religious voters. On an early December morning, he was in the pivotal February primary state of South Carolina speaking of Scripture and Jesus to a sparsely attended African American church service. But by midmorning he said on Fox News Sunday that he didn't want to talk about "guns, God, gays, abortion, and all this controversial social stuff."

According to a November 2003 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll, 87 percent of U.S. voters say religion is important to them. Among moderate to conservative Democrats, 82 percent said that "we all will be called before God at the Judgment Day to answer for our sins." According to another Pew poll in 2000, 70 percent of Americans—roughly the same for Democrats and Republicans—want the President to be a person of faith.

The famous red and blue maps showing how each county voted in the 2000 elections also reflect the distribution of religious and nonreligious voters. "If you went to church regularly, you went overwhelmingly Republican," said Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council. "If you never went to church, you went pretty much overwhelmingly Democratic."

In the 2000 election, Bush won 61 percent among voters who said they attend religious services more than once a week. The Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing says its survey, taken November 10-12—one year before the general election—uncovered what could be a decisive swing toward Bush among registered voters who say religion is extremely or very important to their vote. While such voters were about evenly split between Gore and Bush in August 2000, they have tacked strongly toward the President. Bush won their support 67 percent to 30 percent over Dean, 65 percent to 33 percent over Gephardt, and 65 percent to 33 percent over Wesley Clark. Said political analyst Michael Barone, "Americans increasingly vote as they pray, or don't pray."

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February 2004, Vol. 48, No. 2