Gallup Poll: Obama Closes 'God Gap' Further

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

To hear conservative Christian activists tell it, Obama's first 100 days in office have proved that all his campaign talk about valuing conservative religious folks and caring about issues like reducing abortion was little more than faith-based fakery. Look at his appointment of abortion-rights supporter Kathleen Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services, they say or his reported plan to undo so-called conscience protections for healthcare workers.

Witness Obama's reversal of the Mexico City policy banning federal dollars to abortion backers abroad.

And after the Notre Dame imbroglio, do you really need more evidence that the president has burned up his credibility with Roman Catholics?

Then comes today's Gallup Poll of Obama at 100 days. It shows that Obama has closed the religion gap even further than he did during the2008 election, with most weekly churchgoers now voicing approval.

Before the election, just 41 percent of weekly church attendees backed Obama, compared with 61 percent of infrequent attendees. Now, 57 percent of weekly churchgoers say they approve of Obama's job performance, compared with 69 percent of infrequent churchgoers.

I called Gallup to ask how this squares with the 2004 election, the year when the so-called God gap between the Democrats and Republicans had reached a recent zenith. Gallup says that just 37 percent of weekly church attendees backed John Kerry in 2004, compared with 60 percent of infrequent attendees.

Which means that Obama has gained 20 points among weekly churchgoers over the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004. Impressive.

Here's Mark Silk's take (with which I concur) on how Obama did it:

In my view, it's that Obama has succeeded in calming the fears of religious folks sufficiently to enable a disproportionate number of them to support him for other reasons—mainly economic. (According to yesterday's NYT poll, Americans support his handling of the economy by 55 percent to 24 percent.) He's done this by reaching out to religious conservatives, rolling out pro-choice policies quietly, taking a couple of middle-ground positions (stem cell funding limits, abortion reduction), and putting off some hot button issues such as reversing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. In a word, he's so far managed to keep his social liberal base happy without scaring the conservatives.

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