The Disappearing God Gap? Religion in the 2008 Presidential Election

After the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004, the "God Gap" became a hotly debated political issue. Religious voters were seen as the key to Bush's victory, and Democrats began scrambling to reach out to them. Four years later, however, with the economy in a tailspin on election day, religion barely seemed to register on people's radar screens. In this book, a team of well-regarded scholars digs deeper to examine the role religion played in the 2008 campaign. They take a long view, placing the election in historical context and looking at the campaign as a whole, from the primaries through all the way through election day. At the heart of their analysis is data gleaned from a national survey conducted by the authors, in which voters were interviewed in the spring of 2008 and then re-interviewed after the election.

CS: Executive Director of the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, Calvin College; KdD: Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, and Faculty Fellow, Honors College, Grand Valley State University; DK: Professor of Political Science and Interim Director of the Center forSocial Research, Calvin College; SM: Research Fellow, Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics,Calvin College and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Pepperdine University; JP: Professor of Political Science, Calvin College