The Protestant Left and the Democratic Party.

Some observers have argued that the Democratic Party is making a strategic mistake by not appealing to American voters with progressive religious language. Could such a strategy be beneficial for the Democrats? In this paper, I examine the partisan leanings and recent voting behavior of individuals at the mass level who might be counted as potential allies of a resurgent Protestant left. Despite the existence of a meaningful network of elite-level organizations, the extent to which people at the mass level might identify with a Protestant left is unclear. Who might support a Protestant left within the mass public, and what are their personal political priorities? Using available data sources, including the National Election Studies and the General Social Survey, I explore how we might tease potential Protestant left identifiers out of the general population. Is there a potentially unified mass base for a resurgent Protestant left? We know that mainline Protestants have been leaning in a more Democratic direction in recent election years. Is it the case that mass-level Protestant left identifiers could be ripe for an electoral realignment of the sort that transformed evangelical Protestants in the 1980s? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]