Dean's polling finds: Voting decisions are influenced as much or more by their religious faith as by traditional political issues.

Howard Dean's Democratic National Committee has been studying the electorate, and the party's problem with voters of faith is both worse and better than he feared.

The former Vermont governor, in one of his first actions as DNC chairman, commissioned pollster Cornell Belcher to survey voters in eight states won by President Bush last November: Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, New Mexico and Nevada.

What Belcher found that worries the Democrats is that a significant percentage -- 47 percent of voters and 51 percent of white women in the eight states -- said their voting decisions are influenced as much or more by their religious faith as by traditional political issues. Not surprisingly, they went heavily for Bush over Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), with 66 percent backing the president.

But Belcher's survey also persuaded Dean and other DNC officials that these voters may not be beyond their reach. "These so-called values or faith voters are some of the most economically anxious voters in the electorate," Belcher said. "They're tremendously cross-pressured between their pocketbook concerns and their moral values concerns."

Dean believes that provides an opening for Democrats, but only if Democratic candidates learn to speak a different language. "Democrats wonder why people vote against their own economic interest," he said. "The answer is that Democrats don't connect with people's fears about how to raise their children in a difficult social environment."

The former presidential candidate said issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion are not the major obstacles facing Democrats, but the impression that Democrats convey to these voters is that their answer to those fears is more government. "The message people hear is, 'Oh, we'll raise your children for you.' That's the wrong message," Dean said.

Dean called the survey "the best poll I'd seen in 10 years," and said he hopes to road-test a message designed to reach enough voters in competitive red states to turn the tide. "If it works," he said, "the other folks in Washington will pick it up very quickly."

(4-24-05, The Washington Post.)
_______________

With respect to the abortion, recall my 4-18-05 post on refining our message on being pro-choice, not pro-abortion, which post alluded to how we raise our children. The post noted:

The abortion message:

As I have stated before on this blog, I am pro-choice, not because I am a Democrat, but because I think it should be a woman's choice, and definitely not mine unless it happened to be my wife or daughter.

But what if someone has religious convictions different from me; do we not have room in the Party for such person?

And as we reach out to religious voters, we should quit arguing the legality of abortion, and rather shift the theme to abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." And just as we want to see fewer abortions, we want our children to learn good values -- at home, in school, at Sunday school and at church with their parents.

Good values, health care, jobs and sex education can reduce the number of abortion procedures, and who can be opposed to that.
_______________

My assessment of Dr. Dean to date. So far, so good. In fact, very, very good.