SOUL FOOD:

At the end of the general presidential election in 2004, the mainstream media were by many accounts stunned by the apparent influence conservative and evangelical Christians had in keeping George W. Bush in the White House.

This year, pollsters have devised exit polls to presumably keep them from being blindsided that way again. Poll after poll has asked Republican primary voters whether they are evangelical or “born-again” Christians.

The question however, in the same polls, has not been put to Democrats, prompting evangelicals to protest the lopsided polling and the characterization of being exclusively tied to the Republican Party.

In January, nine prominent Christian leaders sent a letter to polling and political directors represented in the national election pool urging them to measure the voting behavior of evangelicals in both parties.

Following the February primaries in Tennessee and Missouri, Faith and Public Life — A Resource Center for Justice and the Common Good — began to take up the task of surveying both Republican and Democrat voters. The results showed what Faith and Public Life called “large numbers” of white evangelicals participating in both the Republican and Democratic primaries.

In each state the numbers where similar: Roughly one-third of white evangelical voters participated in the Democratic primaries.

After Ohio’s primary, a poll also commissioned by Faith in Public Life, the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Sojourners, and conducted by Zogby International, indicated “43 percent of white evangelical Ohio primary voters took part in the Democratic primary and 57 percent in the Republican one.”

The poll, with a 5-percentage point margin of error, also showed that 42% of the state’s white evangelical voters gave jobs and the economy more weight in deciding how to vote over 14% who viewed abortion and same-sex marriage as the top issues. A 54% majority said they want a broader issue agenda in this election to include “ending poverty, protecting the environment, and tackling HIV/AIDS.”

Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and the 2008 election campaign, sponsored by The Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., has additionally proposed that Democratic-voting respondents to polls be asked if they normally vote Democratic in national elections.

Silk wants to know if a shift is occurring of evangelicals from GOP to Democratic ranks.

But evangelicals, comprising 25-30% of the population, aren’t the only religious voters being watched and second-guessed.

On March 1, a piece by Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times claimed Roman Catholics hold “the only true ‘swing vote’ among discrete electoral groups followed by pollsters and social scientists.” Which, if true, could pack a lot more weight, if not surprise, in November.

Rutten makes an interesting case. “One in four Americans is a Roman Catholic,” he writes. Add to that exit polls across the country that show “Catholics are casting 25% of all the primary votes” — a turnout that reflects their numbers in the general population.

While he doesn’t give “the typical Catholic” credit for knowing “an encyclical from an insecticide,” Rutten does recognize the faith’s “long tradition of theologically nuanced social thought.”

He quotes the Vatican: “The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the church’s social doctrine does not exhaust one’s responsibility toward the common good.”

Which means Catholics are apt to seek social justice on many levels. Rutten names a handful of issues: national health insurance, a living wage (a term he notes was as good as coined by Catholic commentators), immigration reform, capital punishment and preemptive warfare.

You need only browse the website of Network, a national Catholic social justice lobby, ( www.networklobby.org) to find others.

Given this, Rutten says it’s hard to imagine Roman Catholic voters going with John McCain (pro-war, pro-capital punishment, pro-stem cell research, hostile to social spending and progressive taxation) regardless of whether his rival in November is Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

And now McCain has hung the John Hagee albatross around his neck.

The pastor from San Antonio has called the Roman Catholic Church “the Great Whore of Revelation 17,” “apostate,” and a “false cult system.” McCain, who has been criticized by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others for accepting Hagee’s endorsement, has said he repudiates Hagee’s comments “if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics.”

I’m not sure what the “if” is about.

Is McCain skeptical about what Hagee is clearly on record having said? Or is he doubtful that Hagee’s remarks are, indeed, offensive?

On Friday, the Columbia Journalism Review’s “Campaign Desk” wondered in a commentary titled “The McCain-Hagee Connection,” “Why is the press ignoring this hate-monger?”

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has written about the flap, saying the story is growing “though still not as much as it ought to.” Others, among them “The New Republic,” huffingtonpost.com, and numerous blogs have chimed in with much the same point as Greenwald.

His point is this: A presidential candidate should not be held responsible for the views of a supporter unless the candidate has sought out — or expressly welcomed — the support.

In the case of Hagee, McCain has done both, Greenwald and others point out. Both the Catholic League and Catholics United have denounced McCain’s embrace of the controversial pastor.

I doubt they are going to drop the issue and I’m not sure they should.

On the Spiritual Politics blog, Mark Silk wrote, “John Hagee’s anti-Catholicism goes well beyond the kind of ‘odium theologicum’ that derives from tough but honest differences over the right path to salvation.” He compares Hagee’s characterization of Catholicism to Louis Farrakhan’s depiction of Judaism as a “gutter religion.”

I don’t think he’s off the mark. And so far, McCain’s comments on the matter strike me as nothing more than doublespeak.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.