Seeking the Lost: Democratic Efforts to Attract Religious Voters in 2008.

A great deal of political science literature addresses how religion affects voting behavior. In particular, the 2004 election was characterized by the media and political scientists as "a matter of faith" because both Catholics and Protestants favored the Republican party due to its conservative stances on moral issues and its efforts to attract religious voters. That changed in the 2008 election, as a majority of Catholics and higher numbers of other religious groups selected the Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama. This paper applies Schofield and Miller's model of realignment, in which candidates employ "flanking moves" to bring new constituencies into the party to form a winning coalition, to argue that Obama was able to win the Catholic vote by emphasizing his populist economic policies while courting religious voters and downplaying his liberal stances on social issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]